Blogging By The Numbers

Studies

from the blog-research dept

Well, look at that. Apparently blogging has become such a big deal that there’s now research coming out about the “space” (yes, it’s a “space” now). For those who thought that AOL’s entrance into blogging was “the end”, I’d say the fact that market researchers are focused on the topic may be an even worse sign. Anyway, the numbers suggest that there are between 2.4 and 2.9 million blogs, with the majority of them using free hosting services from LiveJournal, Blogger or DiaryLand. What they don’t see is how many of these sites are actually updated on a regular basis, and how many were just someone messing around for a couple of days. Jupiter has found that about 2% of the online community has created a blog – and that it’s split evenly between genders, with most bloggers being experienced online users (online at least 5 years). The odd thing is that while the gender split is equal for writers, the readers are skewed to the male side. Also, the readers seem wealthier than the writers. More than half of all blog writers have household incomes of less than $60,000, but more than half of blog readers have household incomes over $60,000. Of course, as with any such studies, I imagine the accuracy could be questioned.