The revolution will be commercialized

Out of Technorati’s top 100 most-linked weblogs**, only 16 don’t feature advertising or are otherwise noncommercial:

Scripting News
Doc Searls
kottke.org
Jeffrey Zeldman
The Volokh Conspiracy
Scobleizer
Lileks
Joel on Software
Rather Good
Joi Ito’s Web
RonOnline
USS Clueless
BuzzMachine
Vodkapundit
Baghdad Burning
Crooked Timber

Lots of interesting observations to be made about the commercialization of weblogs…the quick uptake of advertising on blogs, the increasingly false perception of blogs as inherently unbiased by commercial interests (and therefore preferable to “big media”), the continuing shift from blogging as a hobby to blogging for a variety of reasons, the number of weblogs launching lately that have ads from day one, the demographic difference between the typical circa-2002 blogger and the blogger of today, etc.

Just a couple of years ago, almost every weblog on a top 100 list would have been noncommerical and the blogosphere in general was mostly opposed to advertising on blogs. Now it’s accepted to the point where I haven’t heard anyone complain about it in months…even Boing Boing’s audience didn’t protest too much when they added advertising a couple of months ago.

** In compiling this list, I ignored the many entries on the top 100 list that weren’t weblogs, are no longer being updated, or are artificially popular, so the total sample is somewhat less than 100.

Update: I just wanted to clarify that when compiling the above list, I counted sites with tip jars or non-ad affiliate links (e.g. Amazon) as primarily noncommercial. In specifying what was commercial, I was most concerned with advertising (text, banner, popup) and overt commercial situations (company blogs, blogs for magazines & newspapers, etc.). There’s no clean distinction between commercial and noncommercial sites, but I think the “ads & pro blogs vs everything else” distinction is useful in talking about how the situation has changed in the past couple of years.