Recent Blog Entries
Round 5 Analysis
Written by Mike Rundle on October 26, 2006
To say that our Round 5 with 1,190 submissions was big is a real understatement. We got blog submissions from all over the world, on a variety of different platforms, on dozens of different subjects, all from people who are passionate about the blog they own, run, and love.
Here’s a graph depicting how Round 5 stacks up against our first four membership rounds:
Round 5 was by far our largest round, but it’s also many other things. Here are some statistics I thought were pretty interesting:
- If you break it down per minute, we received an average of more than 1 blog every minute for the first 19 hours.
- If you add up the total number of blogs from all networks it’s still less than the total number of blogs submitted to 9rules in just one day. But quantity doesn’t mean quality, I’ll get to that in a bit.
- We reached 500 submissions twice as fast as Round 4.
- We beat Round 4’s total number of submissions in just over 9 hours, or, before I woke up
(Paul says he went to bed right before 9am) - We had over 170 comments on our number guessing game.
- One person submitted their site three minutes after we shut down the form, we have no idea how that happened… I think he/she had the form loaded up in their browser ahead of time and then just left it there past when we removed it. Go figure!
- Our IRC room had dozens of people in it, with a max number of them in right around midnight. The chatters counted down to the end of the round like it was New Years… very cool to see. Happppy New Round!
Now just because we got over one thousand applications doesn’t mean that we’re accepting anywhere close to that, of course who knows, maybe every single one is amazing! Traditionally we’ve added between 8-16% of the total number of submissions to 9rules, so if that holds true then “you can assume” we’ll pick about 160 blogs this time, but obviously that’s totally up in the air right now so no promises can be made. One thing I can say is that with every round the blogs who submit get even better, making our jobs all that more difficult
October 26th, 2006 at 3:16 pm
Wow! It just keeps getting better every round!
October 26th, 2006 at 3:17 pm
Pretty graph.
October 26th, 2006 at 3:24 pm
Looking forward to the results
October 26th, 2006 at 3:29 pm
Hey Mike, thanks for the update and great metrics.
Your graph is much better then the timezone image Scrivs had up
Any idea on a time frame for announcing the new blogs coming into the world of 9rules?
October 26th, 2006 at 3:30 pm
This was very interesting, thanks for the update!
October 26th, 2006 at 3:39 pm
WOW. Sounds like the competition could be tough this round. I can’t wait to see all of the amazing blogs that make it.
October 26th, 2006 at 3:42 pm
Thank you mikey.. for answering my q, reagrding what percentage will be accepted…
8%-16%… that is great… 9 rules will be huge…
October 26th, 2006 at 3:44 pm
Well we’ll see what the real percentage is, we can’t really estimate until we’re in there looking at the blogs. It could be much higher, it could be lower, we just don’t know — we take every blog we think is great and if a lot more than 16% are great then we have no qualms about taking those
October 26th, 2006 at 4:10 pm
Great stuff, and the graph is pointing upwards.
October 26th, 2006 at 4:11 pm
wish I got in on Round One submissions! Chances would be much, much higher.. especially if your standards are higher each round with the “quality” increase that you mentioned!
October 26th, 2006 at 4:19 pm
Amazing. I can’t wait to see the list because I’ll most likely be adding even more RSS feeds to my reader!
October 26th, 2006 at 4:45 pm
Congrats guys, just goes to show that you’ve built-up a great community!
Really looking forward to seeing new faces in this community, I’m sure all finalists will have great blogs!
October 26th, 2006 at 4:49 pm
Make me an hourly graph, Mike. Pout.
October 26th, 2006 at 4:59 pm
Congratulations! This is truly a testament to the quality of your organization and site, proving that belonging is something to be proud of.
October 26th, 2006 at 6:00 pm
You guys really got this network going strong. Those are some crazy stats. If you got blogs from all over the world, and content is important, I’m just curious if any of you guys speak chinese?
October 26th, 2006 at 7:29 pm
@Shawn Blanc: Just enough to order food… from Mr. Wong’s. (Starting to make my way into Mandarin, though. The language, not the orange.)
October 26th, 2006 at 10:04 pm
Congratulations indeed.
Is there a plan for getting through all of them? Or will you be using that old stand by of working late and ordering in?
October 26th, 2006 at 10:39 pm
Excellent! I’m impressed!
I wonder though, do you guys ever get concerned about indirectly obfuscating individual members as the community grows ever larger?
October 26th, 2006 at 11:47 pm
this network is becoming bigger and better
October 27th, 2006 at 12:26 am
That was a cool post.
Counting down to the new round was the most fun I had in ages. 
October 27th, 2006 at 12:32 am
as you said, the blogs get better every round .. does that mean you migh consider addind more from this round ( or maybe in the future ) and getting rid of sum that are in your community that arnt up to scratch???
October 27th, 2006 at 12:58 am
I agree Veronique, it was a great time
October 27th, 2006 at 1:33 am
i was there
October 27th, 2006 at 2:08 am
I’m dying to see the results already… tough work checking out 1,190 blogs (glups), but I’m sure you’ll get a blast out of it
October 27th, 2006 at 2:12 am
I can’t wait to see the results.
And of course, congratulations on such a wonderful turn out.
October 27th, 2006 at 6:30 am
Congratulations!! How exciting, and I love the cool graph. Can’t wait to see the results and find new, great blogs to read!
October 27th, 2006 at 7:42 am
That’s the prettiest graph I’ve seen this week!
Great numbers. Looks like we’re going exponential…
October 27th, 2006 at 8:27 am
I so want to see the hourly breakdown of the 24 hours.
October 27th, 2006 at 10:28 am
Going exponential.
I like that, Andrew.
It would make a great post title.
October 27th, 2006 at 10:57 am
What did you use to make that graph? It’s so clean.
October 27th, 2006 at 10:59 am
Hey Johnny, nothing fancy, just Photoshop and a little bit of help from the onscreen ruler
October 27th, 2006 at 11:22 am
Mike Rundle you’re my hero
with your Photoshop Fu.
October 27th, 2006 at 1:34 pm
This is a huge effort on your part. I and the other 1190 appreciate it, {I do whether I am among those accepted on not}. HUGE.
October 27th, 2006 at 1:47 pm
Compared to the first 4 rounds, in which the submissions grew at a steady pace, this 5th one is definitely a surprise, and a great one in fact.
If the 6th round proves to be any similar, in terms of growth, we may very well see almost, or over, 2000 submissions.
October 27th, 2006 at 2:15 pm
Ugh I cannot believe I missed it AGAIN!!! I’m so stupid!
October 27th, 2006 at 4:27 pm
I’ve heard rumors there won’t be a 6th round.
October 27th, 2006 at 6:20 pm
[...] Question 4: Will you ever see another article get posted? Answer: Of course you will. I already have in the can two posts that I’ll publish next week: One on Responsibility and Technology and the other on the current state of Hosting and Data Storage. Plus, I will have many, many more to come (I better considering I just applied to 9Rules…). So make sure that you stay tuned because things are going to be fun, fun, fun from here on out, lol!!!! [...]
October 27th, 2006 at 7:48 pm
The suspense is KILLING me
October 28th, 2006 at 12:00 am
Where did you hear that, Shawn?
Mike?
October 28th, 2006 at 4:08 pm
Rumors are overrated
October 28th, 2006 at 10:15 pm
I can’t believe I completely forgot to submit my site …dangit!
October 29th, 2006 at 6:28 am
No round 6? What will I do with my life if there’s no round 6?
October 29th, 2006 at 7:12 am
Shawn you know something I don’t know?
October 29th, 2006 at 10:58 am
Look at all these rumors, surrounding me every day. I just need some time, some time to get away from - from all these rumors, I can’t take it no more…
October 29th, 2006 at 11:26 am
i think its in the best interest of 9rules to have round 6 and keep having them each yr .. unless they dont want the site to keep growing
October 29th, 2006 at 12:27 pm
We’ve talked in the past about revamping our submission process, making it more democratic, but nothing is set in stone. Right now we’re concentrating on this current Round 5 and if/when a Round 6 will occur is still up in the air.
October 30th, 2006 at 1:35 am
When do we hear if we have been accepted into 9rules? and can we re-submit on the next round if we are not sucessful this time?
October 30th, 2006 at 11:10 am
[...] And if you’ve submitted your blog for inclusion, Mike Rundle in his 9Rules Round 5 Analysis points out: Traditionally we’ve added between 8-16% of the total number of submissions to 9rules, so if that holds true then “you can assume†we’ll pick about 160 blogs this time (though it’s all up in the air at the moment). [...]
October 30th, 2006 at 10:58 pm
I am eagerly awaiting the results. Can you tell me when they will be out?
October 31st, 2006 at 12:55 am
Congratulations all for being an enviable network of great writers!
October 31st, 2006 at 2:59 pm
You can submit any round you want. We haven’t nailed down a date since its hard to determine how long it takes to go through 1100+ sites.
November 1st, 2006 at 11:56 pm
Let’s make an educated guess.
50 blogs a day. (assuming the whole 9rules crew is involved and ‘distributed computer’ is done.)
1100 submissions.
3 weeks?
mid Nov’s my educated guess.
Unless Scrivs is gonna run another competition on when the ~160 acceptances might be announced.
November 8th, 2006 at 9:37 am
[...] I recently submitted this blog for 9rules consideration. Statistically it looks like I have a one in seven chance of being accepted. I will keep you posted. Filed under: Asides | Tags: blogging, networking. [...]
November 24th, 2006 at 6:18 am
[...] Thats right, the true public face of 9rules can not be put on a handful of people, but on the community. As far as I know, that was the intention with 9rules - it was launched in 2003 by a few people with a vision/an idea, and it has now escalated to be a community with more than 200 members, and with more than 1190 people interested in becoming members (october 2006). [...]
December 7th, 2006 at 3:01 pm
[...] Round 5 gave 9rules almost 1200 submissions and was the biggest round for network so far and I think this wasn’t coincidence. Below you can see a graph round submission numbers taken from 9rules official blog. [...]
August 22nd, 2007 at 11:12 am
[...] Each blog that applies for membership is reviewed and evaluated over a period of time to assess its quality, value and contribution to the blogosphere. The last submission window took place last October and attracted 1,190 submissions in 24 hours. Only about 130 blogs were accepted from those 1,190 applicants. The owners have stated that this round garnered even more submissions. [...]