Posted on 11/22/2007 4:43:01 PM PST by kristinn
FreeRepublic.com, the eleven-year-old conservative granddaddy of political discussion websites, was rated the most popular political website by Hitwise, an Internet data tracking service, for the week ending November 17, 2007 with 5.14% market share.
The liberal site, HuffingtonPost.com, founded two-and-a-half years ago, was the only site that came close to Free Republic in interest from net users, with 4.51% market share. In a distant third place, the five-year-old liberal site DailyKos.com, was left in the dust by Free Republic and Huffington Post, garnering only 2.57% market share.
The others sites Hitwise listed were, in order, politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com with 2.17%; townhall.com with 2.1%; buzzflash.com with 1.95%; politico.com with 1.9%; humanevents.com with 1.84%; realclearpolitics.com with 1.72% and democraticunderground.com with 1.69%.
Free Republic has received none of the fawning promotion in the mainstream media that its nearest competitors get. It takes no paid advertising, has no membership fees and relies solely on donations for its existence. Its founder and webmaster, Jim Robinson, is not touted as a political player like Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington and Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas Zuniga are. The site has endured withering criticism this year by pundits from Bill O'Reilly to Patrick Ruffini. Yet, Free Republic survives and thrives as one of the most popular and influential political websites.
From leading the charge to impeach President Bill Clinton in 1998, to the 2004 exposing of the fraudulent National Guard documents that led to Dan Rather's firing by CBS News, to the recent deep-sixing of expansion of the S-CHIP program, Freepers, as members at the site are known, have changed politics in America.
Liberals despise them, some conservatives seeth with envy, yet none can deny that more than a decade in to the online revolution, Free Republic is still a force to be reckoned with.
There are other examples of talk show hosts across the country using FR as a resource. There are more than a thousand such hosts when you get down into the smaller markets and hosts who are not franchised at all. And you are quite right, none of them are as likely to cite FR as a source as Rush is.
Congressman Billybob
We just keep on truckin’ and battlin’ and doin’ what we can.
John / Billybob
Thanks for the PING!
I can’t see why they did not just ask you and I. We could have told them FR was the VERY BEST!
Congrats, FR! It really is the best around.
I can’t explain why, but other websites or threads lack that je ne sais quoi.
Or bumped...
Who the heck is Patrick Ruffini?
Hank
Even better “ It’s better to rule in Hell” than “ to be a servant in Heaven” and It fits her to a T.
Thehousingbubbleblog.com is just second,though.
wooohooooooooo!
FreeRepublic.com, the eleven-year-old conservative granddaddy of political discussion websites, was rated the most popular political website by Hitwise, an Internet data tracking service, for the week ending November 17, 2007 with 5.14% market share.:')
It’s the GGG threads that make the difference, ahem.
I wasn’t gonna say it... ;’)
Interesting. Leading the pack, by a long way, atheists. Of course, that was in 2006, over a year ago, I’m sure last November made believers out of a few of them. ;’)
| I am most closely aligned with ...
|
|
| Judaism |  49 votes - 3 % |
| Mormonism | 5 votes - 0 % |
| Hinduism/Sikhism | 9 votes - 0 % |
| Wicca, Shinto, or an animist/shamanist religion | 63 votes - 4 % |
| one of the ancient Greek, Nordic, Egyptian or Meso-American religions | 13 votes - 0 % |
| the belief that there is a God or gods, but no organized religion captures this for me | 176 votes - 12 % |
| Buddhism | 66 votes - 4 % |
| agnosticism | 217 votes - 14 % |
| atheism | 366 votes - 25 % |
| Roman Catholicism | 129 votes - 8 % |
| Eastern Orthodoxy | 6 votes - 0 % |
| Islam | 10 votes - 0 % |
| a relaxed Protestant denomination | 211 votes - 14 % |
| a fundamentalist Protestant denomination | 27 votes - 1 % |
| Other | 104 votes - 7 % |
| 1451 Total Votes | |
:’D I’m not too sure we’d ever have time to read any of the advertising anyway.
Thanks kristinn, and congratulations and thanks Jim.
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