How's the Blogosphere doing?

Technorati recently published their "State of the Blogosphere" (in 6 parts/days). Technorati defines the "Active Blogosphere as: The ecosystem of interconnected communities of bloggers and readers at the convergence of journalism and conversation".
It's really nice to read up on what the blogosphere is made up of and how it relates to other media. Technorati gives us all kinds of facts, figures and numbers on the blogosphere.

Technorati says, blogging is here to stay:
Blogging is…
- A truly global phenomenon: Technorati tracked blogs in 81 languages in June 2008, and bloggers responded to our survey from 66 countries across six continents.
- Here to stay: Bloggers have been at it an average of three years and are collectively creating close to one million posts every day. Blogs have representation in top-10 web site lists across all key categories, and have become integral to the media ecosystem.

Bloggers are…
- Not a homogenous group: Personal, professional, and corporate bloggers all have differing goals and cover an average of five topics within each blog.
- Savvy and sophisticated: On average, bloggers use five different techniques to drive traffic to their blog. They’re using an average of seven publishing tools on their blog and four distinct metrics for measuring success.
- Intensifying their efforts based on positive feedback: Blogging is having an incredibly positive impact on their lives, with bloggers receiving speaking or publishing opportunities, career advancement, and personal satisfaction.
It was funny to read that the largest part of the bloggers is somewhere between 25-44 years old. (How does this relate to the Generation Y hype?!). And most of the bloggers are male (66%).

Bloggers are mostly segmented in this way:
- personal (blog about your life, personal interest)
- professional (blog about your work
- corporate (blog for your company)

I was surprised that the most important reasons for bloggers to blog is "personal satisfaction". I can relate to that! And for bloggers in the professional segment it has a mayor impact: they know their industry better, gives them visibility in the industry, etc.

Technorati also addresses blogging strategies. How do people blog and get people to read their posts. After I read this part (day 3) is was wondering: Is it OK to bookmark your own posts? Do bloggers do this?
With respect to the amount of time bloggers spend on blogging I was wondering: How much time to professional bloggers spend on blogging during work hours? (In other words: how accepted is it to blog during work hours or do professional bloggers do this at home in their own time?)

Finally, "the State of the Blogosphere" also stresses the importance of blogging for brand building and how they think this will develop.

Comments

  1. AnonymousOctober 3, 2008 at 1:21 PM

    A very interesting investigation indeed! Blogging is a relative new way of expressing your opinions, but most of all a tool for knowledge sharing. Challenging eachother to think about problems, theories and opportunities in daily practice is something that should happen more often!

    Even more interesting: what kind of developments do we foresee on the subject of blogging?

    ReplyDelete

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