Snob

Steve Dunn thinks that AOL Journals might just lead to a traffic explosion here on the Olde Tyme Blogosphere:

Instapundit gets about 75,000 visits per day. Even if we generously assume 60,000 different people read it (excluding those who visit several times daily), that’s less than one fifth of one percent of the total number of AOL subscribers.

If Scalzi’s blog draws a regular readership of 1% of the AOL audience, he will blow the combined readership of Instapundit and Andrew Sullivan out of the water. The cool thing, of course, is that Scalzi can’t keep all that traffic to himself. He will link to Instapundit. He will link to Andrew Sullivan. He will link to Begging To Differ (dare we dream?) The advent of AOL Journals seems destined to be the proverbial rising tide that lifts all boats – except it will feel more like a tsunami.

No one knows just what to expect.

Hey, I’d appreciate the extra hits just as much as anyone — but I honestly don’t expect much to come out of AOL. Those most likely to read (and link to) sites like this one, or Glenn’s, or John’s, already do, at least in the short-to-medium term.

If an AOLer decides to launch a blog, it will most likely be yet another “this is what I did in school today while my adorable cats sang along to obscure Goth songs”-type blogs, only with more emoticons and fewer uses of the Shift key. If a politically-minded AOLer decides to launch a more political blog, well. . . he or she is probably already reading Instapundit.

On the other hand, I’d dearly love to be completely wrong.