The state of the blogosphere

By | November 8, 2010

Technorati recently released the latest edition of what they call “The State of the Blogosphere”. Now, for all of us who will be attending the WBF, that  does sound quite intriguing. I took a closer look and here are a few things I thought noteworthy.

The survey is based on a set of 7,200 bloggers who filled out Technorati’s questionnaire. While that isn’t a huge number, it’s still good enough for a rough overview of what’s going in the blogosphere, I think.

Anyway, the survey dissects the blogosphere, reaching some conclusions which aren’t exactly new (“Overall, bloggers are a highly educated and affluent group”) but also some that are surprising: For example that the  so-called hobbyists, which are those who blog merely for personal satisfaction (or so they claim), make up 64% of the blogosphere. Now with all the talk about the influence of blogs, the role of bloggers as opposed to journalists, etc., it’s quite astonishing that way more than half of all bloggers don’t even seem to think about any of these issues. And frankly, I find this refreshing. I don’t know about you, but I’ve heard one too many discussions where people automatically assumed that blogging always has a political or marketing-related agenda.

One of the other sections of the report covers “The future of blogs”, which even sounds kind of similar to our tagline here. Well, here’s what the report says about the bloggers’ feelings about the future of blogging:

Respondents believe that blogging has had the greatest impact so far on the subjects of politics, technology, and celebrity/gossip. Looking forward, they believe blogging will have the greatest impact on politics, technology, and business. Reflecting the fact that they own their own businesses, 27% of Self-Employed bloggers said that blogging has had the greatest impact on business. This being said, significantly fewer bloggers believe that blogging has had, and will have, the greatest impact on politics this year than did last year. This may speak to the fact that in 2009 the blogosphere was still feeling a residual impact from President Obama’s 2008 campaign. (link)

Frankly, I’m a bit disappointed by these findings. Was it necessary to ask more than 7000 bloggers to come up with that sort of hum-drum response?

So, what do you say? Are our findings about the future of digital media going to be more interesting than that? I certainly would like to think so.

One thought on “The state of the blogosphere

  1. Michi T/Sandra S

    We do not believe that Blogs of ordinary people, like we are, have that big impact on politics or other big things that are important all over the globe.
    Those Blogs that have this big impact are the professionally written ones, those of politicians or experts on certain things..
    Just take the Blogs of Joe McNally and David Hobbie who are blogging about photography.. they have numerous readers all over the world and a certain impact on the work of those who are reading what they write.. because they know what they are talking and aren’t amateurs who want to tell everybody how they are thinking.

    Reply

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