The Piton posted a list of the most visited outdoor sites, communities and blogs as ranked by Alexa. We hope to compliment that by offering a list of the 10 most influential outdoor blogs according to…us.

Base Camp’s Ranking of Outdoor Blog Influence (ROBI) measures the impact a positive or negative post will have on the subject’s brand image among key influencers. The ROBI is a combination of objective and subjective metrics.

Objective factors include Technorati ranking, average number of comments, and Alexa trends. Subjective factors account for the blog authors’ credibility, sphere of influence, and edu-tainment talent. This ranking is based entirely upon our experience and opinions and has absolutely zero scientifc pretenses.

Basically we’re trying to measure how exposure on these blogs can be the difference between whether people are laughing with you, or laughing at you.

1. The Piton - Well-connected industry insiders slinging velvet-tipped stones near and far. The broad sweep of their BS radar has marketing execs and product managers second-guessing their weaker ideas, and that’s a good thing for the industry.
2. GoBlog - Opinions are like…and these guys have two (we mean that in the best possible way…). Colorful commentary on industry players,products and trends from veteran outdoor athletes. The outside-the-industry compliment to The Piton’s inside game, Climb_Ca and Co. have hit their stride.
3. Treehugger.com - In this era of sustainability marketing, props from Treehugger gives you mad green cred, dude.
4. Wildsnow.com - Lou Dawson has been exploring the backcountry and writing about it for, like, 198 years…He’s got credentials, opinions, and an eager and active community of disciples.
5. The Goat - Exploring, taking chances, and just finding its voice…and with a tab presence from the main page of Backcountry.com’s busy welcome center, it gets lots of eyeballs.
6. The B.O.S.S. Report Blog - Providing between-the-lines, behind-the-scenes perspective on the day’s news from Kris and crew at SportsOneSource(s).
7. BackcountryBlog.com - Another Backcountry.com blog, this one primarily covers adventures and a little bit of the related gear.
8. Two Heel Drive - The personal blog of an outdoor enthusiast who also happens to be a newspaper man in San Jose. Tom does the best job at finding and linking to outdoor related stories in non-endemic media.
9. Gadling.com - Erik Olsen wishes he didn’t have to live in New York City, which is good news for us because he treats his torment by writing a lot about adventure travel. Gadling is part of the massive Weblogs, Inc. network.
10. WickedOutdoorsy - Pale Morning Media’s Drew Simmons is a very funny guy.

We’ll update the ROBI every quarter and/or whenever we feel the urge. Got a nomination or an idea on how to better quantify? We’re wide open…

This entry was posted on Monday, November 13th, 2006 at 12:52 pm and is filed under Powered by Base Camp. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.