2005: The Year That Blogging Evolved

Without a presidential campaign to fuel blog discussion in 2004, the blogosphere in 2005 took on a decidedly different feel and tone. The political wrangling didn't abate, but it was forced to share the stage with entertainment news, hurricane fallout and other natural disasters, technology discussion and blogs' own evolution as emerging media sources.

As it did last year, the BlogPulse team crunched a lot of data, counted links and tallied references to various topics and issues to develop a 2005 BlogPulse Year in Review. It includes lists of top media sources, media stories, audio and video downloads, movies and trend graphs. Among the findings:

Top Blogs: Boing Boing, Engadget, Michelle Malkin, Albino Blacksheep, Instapundit, PowerLine, Gizmodo, Think Progress, Political Animal, and Slashdot. The Huffington Post, which launched mid-year, ranked No. 24, just behind Jeff Jarvis' BuzzMachine.

Top Wikipedia References: Podcasting, Hurricane Katrina, Flying Spaghetti Monster, AJAX, Wiki/Wikipedia, London bombongs, Folksonomy, meme, Web 2.0 and United States.

Top Entertainers: Michael Jackson and Britney Spears were the most-discussed entertainers in 2005, joined by Johnny Depp, Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Kelly Clarkson, Angelina Jolie and Jessica Simpson.

Top Personalities: As they have all year, ficitional Harry Potter slugged it out with George Bush for capturing buzz, and Harry won. Other blogged-out personalities included the late Pope John Paul II, the late Terri Schiavo and Karl Rove.

Top-Cited News Sources: Yahoo! News, BBC, New York Times, CNN, Washington Post, MSNBC, Guardian Unlimited, San Francisco Chronicle, USA Today and Yahoo! Finance.

Top-Cited News Stories: In a newsy year marked by the war in Iraq, hurricanes, the death of a Pope and more, columnist Jon Carroll of the San Francisco Chronicle managed to generate more citations than any other news story with his April column titled "Unitarian Jihad," a call for a return to moderation in issues of politics and faith.Other top news stories touched on the London bombings, Zombie dogs, George Bush, and an assortment of political, religious and satirical stories.

Top Movies (based on IMDB.com citations): Sin City, Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Serenity, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Batman Begins, Sideways, Napoleon Dynamite, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and War of the Worlds.

Multi-Media Blogging: New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin's post-Katrina interview with WWL-AM radio was the most-cited audio link among bloggers in 2005, and the VW Golf commercial that was a breakdancing takeoff of Gene Kelly's "Singin' in the Rain" dance was the most-cited video link.

And because no BlogPulse Newswire entry would be complete without a Trend Graph, here's one tha tracks "blogs: vs. "blogosphere":