Blogging By
The Numbers 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.