Nielsen gets stranglehold on the blogosphere.

Nielsen, best known for their TV ratings and surveys has entered a new arena according to David Utter at WebProNews.

They did so David reports by acquiring a majority stake of the BlogPulse publisher Intelliseek, and plugging that data into Buzzmetrics and dubbing it Nielsen Buzzmetrics.

Blogs have many readers and influence. Now how many readers a blog has can be determined by assessing their traffic and how many sites link to them. Those actions indicate how authoritative a blog and blogger are perceived.

What the ramifications are to the blogosphere are yet to be totally seen but anytime one company, in this case Nielsen has so much control that whoever controls the data controls the marketplace, i.e. the BIG ad dollars. Whoever measures the audience controls everything, as the business of media is about audience. Nielsen has had the monopoly on the broadcast market for decades, and now they've begun a stranglehold on the blogosphere.

What are your thoughts on this? Do you think this will be good for the blogosphere or a bad thing? Or a mixed bag?

Technorati Tags : nielsen+ratings, web+pro+news, david+utter, blogpulse, intelliseek, nielsen+buzzmetrics, blog, blogging, blogosphere