The Idea Dude

CONNECTING THE DOTS ONE AT A TIME

Thursday, November 09, 2006

57 million blogs and growing

Technorati has released their State of the Blogosphere quarterly report. Firstly, hats off to them for sharing the data. Much of that information could have been kept priorietary but they chose to make it public. It's important information, seeing that they track 57 million blogs with about 100,000 new blogs every day. The blogosphere is becoming like the big bang theory, an ever expanding gas that grows without any current signs of abatement. What I found interesting was the following:

  • 1.3 million postings per day, doubled from last year but showing signs of a plateau.
  • The head of the long tail is dominated by mainstream media (like New York Times) and not your traditional bloggers.
  • Based on their concept of authority, the top bloggers (4,000 of them) have over 1,000 posts, have blogged more than 530 days and average almost 2 posts a day.
  • The next tier (26,000 bloggers) have over 380 posts, blogged more than 455 days and average about 1 post or less a day.
  • Third tier (416,000 bloggers) have less than 159 posts, blogged for less than a year (average 260 days) and blog every other day.
  • The rest of the 57 million follows, ergo, a massively long tail.
  • English blogs only represent 39% of the blogosphere with Japanese the second dominant language at 33%.
  • Blog activity spikes with world events.

It confirms what most of us probably knew all along, reputation and brand in general doesn't happen overnight, either you inject a lot of dollars and PR to cause the spike (there's an amazing example of this at Fast Company) or like most of us, it's by a steady and consistent process of posting and building our readership, one reader at a time, day after day. The results should not depress new bloggers but rather the message is blog because you enjoy sharing your thoughts, insights, feelings, whatever. It is after all a log, a chronological stream of consciousness which reflects who you are and what you think about. If you deviate from this, blogging becomes a chore, a business process (with little reward), a job instead of an outlet for your passion for writing and a channel for connecting to like minds.

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