All Things Digital

Could it be a digital indicator that the Blue states are taking back ground from the Red ones–at least in cyberspace?

In February, for the first time ever, Arianna Huffington’s liberal political mega-blog and news site, the Huffington Post, has apparently surpassed the longtime mighty blog leader, Matt Drudge of the conservative/populist-leaning Drudge Report, according to recent traffic data reports from both comScore (SCOR) and Nielsen Online. (Both are pictured here.)

According to data from Nielsen Online, for example, the Huffington Post’s traffic–as measured by monthly unique visitors in the U.S., at home and work–has more than tripled since February of 2007, when it had about 1.1 million unique visitors; by February of 2008, unique visitors had risen to 3.7 million.

In that same month, the Drudge Report had 3.4 million (it had 2.75 million in February of 2007).

Data from comScore is different, as measurement data often is, but shows the same trend (see chart below). The Huffington Post jumped from 457,000 unique visitors in the U.S. at all locations, but had risen to 2.3 million in February of 2008.

For Drudge, comScore reported that it had 1.2 million unique visitors in February of 2007 and 1.6 million in February of 2008.

Of course, internal logs at both sites are likely to show much higher numbers than either comScore or Nielsen Online, by a factor of even four or five times.

Sources at the Huffington Post, for example, said that logs show 12 million uniques for the last month, which they attribute to the addition of new vertical sites within the main site, as well as an increased interest in political news and analysis.

In comparison, Drudge’s site notes it had 21.8 million visits in the past 24 hours. But the site does not define this figure, and it is not and cannot be compared to unique visitors.

“We couldn’t be more pleased with our traffic growth and look forward to continuing to build out our brand,” wrote Arianna Huffington in an email, asking about the traffic spike on her site.

(BoomTown sent an email to the Drudge Report’s contact email on its site late last night, asking for a comment about the data, and will post a reply if I receive one.)

Yesterday, we slapped around VC Fred Wilson in our ongoing efforts to overtake him in our increasingly annoying journey to extract donors and dollars from geeks for a charity called DonorsChoose.org.

It’s working! We’re now hovering near $10,000 with 35 donors and solidly in the No. 2 slot, although Wilson does march on like Sherman to the sea with $16,566 and 61 donors.

So go now and to click on through to our AllThingsD page on DonorsChoose.org here or use the thermometer on the left side of this page to give early and often!

We are nearing the halfway point of the October Tech Blogger Challenge for DonorsChoose.org, which funds classroom projects in high-need public schools, using the Web to match teacher project requests with donors. AllThingsD picked tech projects in both San Francisco and Washington, D.C.

Besides raising funds for kids who need it, we also hope to win an award Yahoo is sponsoring for the tech blogger who garners the biggest number of donors–a free lunch with CEO Jerry Yang! And it must be ours!

Thus, it’s time for a Web celebrity endorsement! So, here’s Arianna Huffington of the Huffington Post, which recently got into a little bit of controversy when one of its top execs said they’d never pay their bloggers!

Well, I didn’t pay her either and absolutely did not hand her her lines at all–except, well, all of them.

Although New York Times poobah Arthur Sulzberger Jr., who was passing by when I was making the video at Google’s Zeitgeist event yesterday, did jokingly chastise me for telling her what to say, it was actually the whole point of egregious fund-raising tactics. (But thanks, Arthur, for keeping me honest!)

So, remember to click on through to our AllThingsD page on DonorsChoose.org here to give early and often!

And here’s the video:

Last night, Arianna Huffington appeared at the Women of Silicon Valley dinner reception, a regular gathering that has been organized by top Google executive Sheryl Sandberg at her Atherton, Calif., home.

The event features a wide range of speakers, all women so far, talking to a broad swath of typically high-ranking women technology executives from Internet, software and hardware companies, as well as from other walks of life, about a range of issues.

Last night, Huffington was there to talk about her powerhouse site, the Huffington Post (disclosure: I have written for it–although I was not paid and wrote about issues related to my sons) and get feedback about the announcement of its expansion, which will include new sections in areas like living and tech.

Many at the group discussion had never met the commanding blogger, and she upped the glam quotient in staid Silicon Valley on a quantum level. Earlier in the day, Huffington appeared for a book talk and signing at Google for her recent tome, “On Becoming Fearless…in Love, Work, and Life.”

The conversation last night, not surprisingly, centered a lot on the struggles of working professional mothers and on the status of women in the workplace.

Here’s a video I did of the event:

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.