I’m a huge fan of the Tour de France, going on right now – I watch it every day. I am intrigued by the strategies, the many facets of sport, and the trial of human strength and endurance. One thing that fascinates me is the power of the peloton. If the peloton organizes itself, they will almost invariably catch the breakaway riders. The peloton is just too strong. Surely there is little more disheartening to a breakaway rider than to look over his shoulder and see the massive peloton charging up his back.

I believe a blog network possesses a power similar to the power of the peloton; that is, the strength of numbers unified towards a single goal. One blog in a network of unified blogs benefits from the plentiful interlinking and interconnectivity between all of the blogs and bloggers in the network. The combined force of the network helps propel the blog to higher heights than if it were struggling on its own.

Of course, it’s not only the network that makes a blog successful. Networks can have dud blogs, and single blogs may do well without a network. But when you combine the two—a strong blogger with a strong blog network—the results are powerful and impressive.

For example, take our own WebMetricsGuru.com, written by web analytics expert Marshall Sponder. In a recent ranking of web analytics blogs on Avinash Kaushik’s Occam’s Razor, WebMetricsGuru was ranked #1. Most of this success is attributable to Marshall Sponder, his excellent content & web analytics articles, and his exceptional efforts to stay connected and abreast with the current technologies and news in this field. His writing is incredibly insightful and thorough.

What particularly struck me is when Avinash says in his analysis, “There is a new #1, congratulations Marshall (with the power of KMM you are going to be hard to beat buddy :) .”

It’s the power of the peloton—the power of the blog network—that helps lift the blogger faster and higher. It is hard to beat. Why did Wonkette become part of the Gawker network, and BoingBoing part of Federated Media? In my opinion, to tap into the power of the blog network.