No one should be shocked that The Huffington Post had better comscore and Nielsen Online numbers than the Drudge Report in February.

February 2008 monthly unique visitors:

Nielsen Online
Huffington Post: 3.7 million
Drudge Report: 3.4 million

comScore
Huffington Post: 2.3 million
Drudge Report: 1.6 million

It has nothing to do with liberal vs. conservative or the content on either site. It has everything to do with conversation. The success of the HuffPost is due to the community it has built around user interaction.

The Drudge Report is one of the first and most successful link blogs (and much better at linking to stories than just about any other site or blog). In fact Drudge’s popularity is a testament to how good Drudge is at sorting through news and finding interesting stories. The Drudge Report is almost entirely repurposed content, with an occasional scoop, while being completely devoid of any sort of community features.

The HuffPost is totally different. It does a lot of the same linking that Drudge does, but that’s not why it’s popular. Don’t try to out-Drudge Drudge because that’s a suicide mission.

So, the HuffPost decided to allow users to comment on stories and it built an impressive network of bloggers. This blog post at the HuffPost already has 500 comments on it.

Not only have community features allowed the HuffPost to garner a huge following, but those features have also allowed the site to be valued at $70 million. Compare that with a valuation of $10 million for Drudge.

The thing is, these two sites are not competitors. One is merely a site of links that has been widely accepted within MSM circles (especially among journalists who consider Drudge and Romenesko mandatory reading), while the other is partisan community site. That community aspect is why the sites are nothing alike, while the partisan aspect allows the HuffPost to hone in on a niche — albeit a very large one.

There are not many lessons to learn from the Drudge Report, because its success is probably not replicable, but the HuffPost is a great template for 21st-century media success. It’s built around a niche and community. That’s the formula for Web success.