The final post topic I gathered from my readers and followers was from Angry Julie (the first two were from @HealthOC and @Hagre). She is convinced the world is dominated by bloggers and wanted to know my thoughts.
I think I agree! Why you ask?
Let’s start by looking at the sheer statistics (stats from Techcrunch, Technorati, comScore and FutureBuzz):
- 133,000,000 – number of blogs indexed by Technorati since 2002
- 346,000,000 – number of people globally who read blogs
- 900,000 – average number of blog posts in a 24 hour period
- 1,750,000 – number of RSS subscribers to TechCrunch, the most popular Technology blog (January 2009)
- 77% - percentage of active Internet users who read blogs
- 81 - number of languages represented in the blogosphere
- 59% – percentage of bloggers who have been blogging for at least 2 years
Need more convincing? Let’s look at the State of the Blogosphere and who these bloggers really are:
- Two-thirds are male
- 60% are 18-44
- The majority are more affluent and educated than the general population
- 75% have college degrees
- 40% have graduate degrees
- One in three has an annual household income of $75K+
- One in four has an annual household income of $100K+
- More than half are married
- More than half are parents
If all the facts aren’t working for you, let’s look at facebook and twitter for a minute. Think about tweets, status updates and timelines…how many links do you see on a daily basis? How many of those sites are run on a blog platform? If you said “almost all”, you’re right. It is rare to see links to “websites” any longer, even if you are referring someone to a product, you tend to send them articles (blogs) vs static sites (websites).
But, it’s not just the sheer volume of blogs anymore, it’s the volume of the voices. People blog about products, whether they like them or not. For example, when the new iPad hit last week, there were articles everywhere about it…and the majority of those articles were written on blogs! Who does the iPad need to impress? Those bloggers! What about something non techie, like a new food item? Doesn’t need to worry about bloggers right? Wrong. According to Technorati, there are over 33,000 blogs dedicated to just food (and the statistics are the same for almost all genres). Bloggers are the new journalists. They can write from anywhere, say (almost) anything about you, and are easily accessible. And if the blogger is popular? Their blogs can often outrank the “normal” articles on any given topic!
But of course, this is just what I see.
What do you think? Are bloggers running the world?
Related posts:
- Tips and Tutorials from the best bloggers
- What is blogging really about?
- How to create a backlog of knowledge
Kirsten
