Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg might be Time’s reigning Person of the Year, but when it comes to influencing the distribution of online news, he’s still no match for Matt Drudge.

Facebook is closing in on 700 million users, but according to a new study by the Pew Research center, the Drudge Report sends more than twice as much traffic to the nation’s top news sites. According to the report:

• Overall, Drudge accounts for 7 percent of all traffic sent to news sites. That’s more than Facebook (3 percent) and Twitter (1 percent) combined.
• “Drudge Report drove more links than Facebook or Twitter on all the sites to which it drove traffic” (emphasis added). In other words, for every single news site Drudge was ranked as a traffic source, it maintained its lead over the social networking sites.
• Drudge drives traffic to sites across the ideological spectrum. Fox News (11 percent), Washington Post (15 percent), ABC News (11 percent), USA Today (8 percent), and Boston Globe (11 percent) all receive significant portions of their traffic from Drudge.
• Only Google tops the Drudge Report as a traffic source.

PBS created an infographic contrasting Drudge with Facebook and Twitter. A caption on the graphic puts it all into perspective: “Five of the top 21 news sites receive more than 10 percent of their audience from the Drudge Report.”

It’s time to give Drudge his due

Forget the wisdom of the crowd. When it comes to online news, Matt Drudge is the one friend that news outlets really need to have.

Given how news outlets have struggled to adapt to the rise of the web, this should make Matt Drudge a hero. He’s sending outrageous amounts of traffic to traditional news outlets, giving them a chance to monetize their professionally generated content. But if you mention Matt Drudge in the tech world, the best you can hope for is a smirk.

Drudge is seldom lauded in Silicon Valley as a web innovator — much less an amazing entrepreneur — which is a shame. Maybe it’s because the design of his website has changed little in 14 years. He’s not on the cusp of the latest web technology to deliver content. Plus, he is politically conservative, which is at odds with the Silicon Valley area’s liberal ethos.

It’s time to give Matt Drudge his due as an Internet pioneer. Before blogging and the rise of the citizen journalist, there was the Drudge Report. In 1998, he was the first to break news linking Bill Clinton to Monica Lewinsky, a scandal that would later lead to impeachment charges being approved in the House of Representatives for only the second time in our republic’s history. That might have been the rocket that took Drudge to the top, but it’s been his own hard work and journalistic instincts that have kept him there for well over a decade.

Drudge’s game-changing design, data-driven approach

Matt Drudge used the web to change the way media works. He showed us that the Walter Cronkites of the news world — curators working at massive conglomerates — shouldn’t have a stranglehold on information. In that sense, he paved the way for subsequent online content entrepreneurs like Arianna Huffington, Mike Arrington, and Om Malik.

He also set a paradigm for web design that still stands to this day. Critics who call his site ugly miss the point. It’s easy to navigate, doesn’t hide important information under sub-sections, and has a minimalist approach to layout. It’s also data-driven. Visit the Drudge Report several times in a day and you’ll see how he tweaks headlines and moves articles around to get the optimal configuration.

Will the Drudge Report’s importance to online news compared to Facebook and other social networks diminish over time? Of course. Social networking is becoming too big a part of our lives to think otherwise. But that’s missing the point. Matt Drudge is an Internet pioneer who’s been at the top of his game since the early days of the web, and he’s disrupted an entire industry in the process.

Eric M. Jackson is the CEO/co-founder of CapLinked, an online platform for private companies, investors, and their advisors to network, manage a capital raise or asset sale, and exchange updates. He previously ran the marketing team at PayPal and is the author of The PayPal Wars.

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The beauty of the Drudge Report right now is that Mr. Drudge is working against his very interests. He’s got some ridiculous headline right now, JULIUS AT FCC WANTS TO ‘REGULATE’ INTERNET, that’s meant to wile up his easily excitable readership. What’s going on is that the FCC has moved one step closer to bringin Net Neutrality to fruition, and has invited the public to weigh in until January 14.

Here’s my problem with the Drudge presentation: he’s using the word “regulation” to scare up opposition to Net Neutrality. Here’s a quick scenario that I pulled out of thin air the site would do well to consider:

My name is Mr Smith. I run a really big ISP in the United States. You know who I don’t like? That damn Drudge Report guy. He’s always talking smack about my company. So what I’m going to do is, now that there’s no Net Neutrality to get in the way, I’m go to either block access to his Web site, or just slow it down so that it’s practically unusable. Now Drudge gets no traffic from my subscribers, and his business suffers. Meanwhile, I’ve gone ahead and partnered with TechCrunch, and have rigged it in such a way that all of my subscribers can access the site REALLY CRAZY FAST, and there’s no ads. My subscribers now go to TechCrunch all the time. It’s a free market, right: I hate Drudge, so I’m gonna block his site. Now, of course, my subscribers are free to go somewhere else if they want to visit Drudge, but considering how little competition there is in broadband, have fun paying for a dial-up connection in 2010; I own all the fiber optic cable in this city!

That’s a gigantic oversimplification, yes, but it illustrates my basic point: Drudge here is so off the mark that he’s putting his own business at risk.

Not smart, sir.

Normally, you probably wouldn’t consider drinking your own shower water after you had used it, but throw a couple of plants in there and you may well reconsider. Or, perhaps you’ll react like the Drudge-ushered Daily Mail commenters and say stuff like “WHAT IS THIS GARBAGE, I EARN THE RIGHT TO WASTE WATER AND I’LL BE DAMNED IF SOME EGGHEAD SCIENTIST SAYS OTHERWISE.”

The idea really isn’t all that novel. Strange in a domestic setting, perhaps, but nothing you wouldn’t find in nature. As the shower water collects on the bottom of the tub, it’s run through a series of filters and chemical-soaking plants. After getting a nice cleaning from the plants, the water goes underneath the tub and into further network of filters. When it’s all said and done, the water leaves the system perfectly drinkable.

The invention hasn’t been prototyped yet, and exists only as these fancy drawings. So far, at least.

And readers of a certain age may recall the wetlands episode of Bill Nye the Science Guy, where he describes how wetlands are nature’s coffee filters. Keep in mind the show is designed for elementary school kids, so the terminology is somewhat simplified.

Thanks to YouTube, I’ve embedded that very episode here for your viewing pleasure. It’s broken into three parts, but this is only part one; interested parties can find the remaining parts on YouTube proper.

Wow, you can totally tell when Drudge links to a news story. Take this one, which details a Colorado plan to give free cellphones to low income people. Similar programs, using landline telephones, have existed for some time, paid for by a federal tax on telephones. So it’s not like this is new money we’re talking about, you know, being used to help people. But check out these comments, alluding to the destruction of the American way of life, whatever that is—crippling credit card debt? ashelymadison.com?