Ok, we’re not saying these are Best Asian websites of 2008, but we are saying they are the most popular according to the internal data we collect on Ningin. Based on the number of Frontpage articles as determined by Ningin’s Social News system, these are the Most Popular Asian Media Websites of 2008:

The numbers to the right are actual number of articles that made it to the Frontpage of Ningin’s social news. An article is considered a Frontpage news item if it reaches a certain threshold of activity. We use a special formula based on a lot of different factors to calculate activity such as views, email forwarding, votes, click-throughs, and many other criteria which we feel is a much better gauge of popularity than the standard vote count on other social news websites.

Our Social News system scans and tracks about 250+ Asian news feeds. Of course there’s tons more blogs and websites that talk about Asian stuff, but anything that is updated less than once every 3 months is below our activity threshold. There are other popular Asian websites out there that do not have RSS feeds and so no easy way for us to track. And still more sites that don’t know how to properly format their RSS feeds even though our system can account for a large degree of non-conforming feeds.

Of the top 10 sites listed above, many have gone through major design changes, nt2099, Allkpop, Alafista, Popseoul, and Asianbite. Jpopkpop is no longer a public website after they were hit with a potential copyright lawsuit. They do have a new, more private home on Livejournal. Popseoul went through an interesting transition this year with the founders parting ways and splitting into two websites, Popseoul and Seoulbeats. For the curious, since the split, Seoulbeats - 112, Popseoul – 39. Asianbite used to be a blog, now I think it’s a social news site but I can’t say for certain.

Of note, our friend and guest blogger, Louis who runs Xorsyst finished 13th with 182 Frontpage articles. He just beat out Dannychoo who finished 14th with 173. Minor disclaimer, Ningin is friends with Allkpop and the Seoulbeats girls, however, our algorithm doesn’t know that and so our numbers are unbiased.

We’re thinking of making these stats display in real time with the upcoming upgrades to Social News. If you want your website to be tracked by Ningin’s Social News service, just let us know by filling out this form.

Congratz to all the websites in the top 10!