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.
I know the feeling! My registration date is 98 -- but that's when I re-registered. I'd been using the site for at least a year before that, posting from my old joke-of-the-day page.
This is HUGH and SERIES!
Nice numbers! Congrats!
BTTT
The 2000 election was when I discovered FR and it really helped me through that fiasco to find my simpaticos here are FR. I will always be grateful.
Guess I should change my tagline...
Congratulations!
Thank you for this wonderful website!
If we didn't go in there as disinfectant, they wouldn't have the hit traffic that they get now!
The only time I am not logged in is when the servers go down. It’s truly like a cutting off a crack addict’s supply - but more incideous....
Likely that huff&puff and Daily Kooks are the same people going back and forth as opposed to here.
Pray for W and Our Victorious Freedom Fighters
This does however prove the point, again, that the leftist are in the minority contrary to their incessant rantings about being in the majority.
I know a lot of hitters are on the site, but what did FR have to do with SCHIP?
Congrats all!
Thank you very much and congratulations for your excellent work. G-d bless and keep you strong to continue this vital work.
AM talk gets more than half of its material directly from FR. Havn’t you figured that out yet? AM talk shows are basically what we post about the night before. AM talk is not much more than FR being transmitted to the internet-illiterate portion of the right wing conservative movement.
In fact, as I remember, Rush even cited FR as the source of his S-chip “debunking” info. Rush is a good man. He’s not afraid to give credit where credit is due. He is secure in his success and knows he’s got good quality talent in demand. Some of the others like to insult FR. Hannity calls us “crazies” or “nutty”. O’reilly calls us a hate site. They are insecure in their position in talk radio. They puff themselves up to the point they cannot allow themselves to acknowledge us “peasants”. They see FR as a competitor, not a partner.
Rush’s humbleness is what makes him great. It took me a long time to figure out that his off the cuff statements that sounded grandiose and self flattering were actually his unique style of mocking himself. His is an "acquired" sense of humor.
Thank you Jim. Thank you Kristinn.
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