Blogging No Big Deal, au contraire

Gallup: blogs no big deal

The Gallup Poll organization released a survey of Internet users showing "reading blogs" at the bottom of a list of 13 options. However, Gallup reported at least 10% of U.S. Web users "frequently" or "occasionally" read Web logs, according to a report of the poll by Editor and Publisher. But nearly 60% "never" look at blogs.

Riiiiiight. So says a report done by Gallup.

Mail and News Are Main Internet Attractions Gallup Poll News

Really no biggee. And lets not forget that Gallup only speaks about the American public. Their 'internet users" should be qualified as "American internet users".

The lack of interest is not slowing blogs' growth. Dave Sifry, founder of Technorati.com, reported his Web log service is seeing 75,000 new blogs a day. "Technorati currently tracks 27.2 million Web logs, and the blogosphere we track continues to double about every 5.5 months." He reported as many as 9% of new blogs are spam or in some way bogus rather than useful content.

The blogosphere is over 60 times bigger than it was only 3 years ago.

Blogosphere still expanding

The blogging phenomenon continues to be one of the Net's brightest stars Around half of bloggers continue to post three months after creating their blog. 10 per cent keep their blogs updated weekly or more often.

So according to Gallup 10% of their American users view blogs, and 10% of us update our blogs, and it is a growing phenomena around the world. So that seems to contradict the nay sayers at Gallup. Of course Gallup being a commercial corporate shill is more interested in the WWW as a source of buy and sell.

Gallup: Blogs Catching On With Web Users

By E&P Staff

Published: February 06, 2006 2:20 PM ET
NEW YORK In the Web universe, how popular are blogs? A report today by The Gallup Poll organization on its latest surveys could be interpreted two ways.

On the one hand, asked to rank their most frequent online activity, Americans who use the Web (now 73% of the population) placed "reading blogs" at the bottom of its list of 13 choices.

But on the other hand: blogs barely existed until recently and now fully one in five Americans say they consult blogs "frequently" or at least "occasionally." That 20% figure trails instant messaging (28%), auctions (23%), videocasts and downloading music (22%).

E-mailing still heads the list at 87%, followed by checking news and weather (72%) and shopping and travel planning (both at 52%).

In terms of blog activity, there is a slight gender gap (24% of men and 17% of women read them), and of course a generation gap, with 28% of those 18 to 29 using them and only 17% of those over 50.

Nearly 60% still say they "never" look at blogs.

Gallup reported big jumps in those paying bills online and making travel plans.

A total of 1,013 adults were surveyed nationally for the poll

Blogs are part of the growing access to the internet, and one form of information sharing. Technocrati reports that blogging is expotentially one of the greatest growing way's that ordinary non techie types gain access to speaking on the WWW.

Blogosphere balloons

Blogging is rapidly becoming one of the favourite online activities. The Technorati website says it is currently tracking just under 19 million blogs.

Furthermore, the practice shows no sign of diminishing. According to Technorati, the number of blogs is doubling every five months and has been doing so for the past three years. This makes the blogosphere thirty times the size it was in 2002.

Although blogging, like many Internet trends, started as an English language activity, it is increasingly spread around the world. The Technorati survey says that there are around 70,000 new blogs started every day - or one a second. In particular, the Chinese have taken to blogging in a big way with some of the biggest growth seen in the Chinese version of MSN Spaces and the native blogcn.com.

Given the well-publicised dangers of stepping out of line in the People's Republic, it is amazing that so many Chinese citizens are willing to put their thoughts online where they can be tracked.

The level of activity of these online scribblers is extraordinary. Somewhere between 700,000 and 1.3 million posts are made each day. That is about 33,000 posts per hour or about 9.2 posts per second.

Blogging is seen as allowing the ordinary citizen to make their voice heard alongside the big companies that control the world's media. Some 50 per cent of bloggers talk about companies at least once a week with 63 per cent of readers believing them to be a trustworthy source or product information. Although many companies provide corporate blogs, 80 per cent of people prefer not to get the executive view. They would rather read a blog from an employee.

For instance since 1997 I have been online posting articles, email discussions, creating and using email listserves for discussions, creating speciality web pages, helping develop sites, etc. etc. and for over a year I too have been blogging since it fits in well with the WYSIWYG that the web has been all about. WYSIWYG systems have allowed those with little or no coding, HTML, experience to now access the web with their thoughts.

The WWW has always been about interactivity, and communications about convergence and cross platform use. There geeky enough for ya. What that means to BCE the corporate owner of Bell Canada, Globe and Mail, CTV, etc. is different than what it means to you or me. Which is why Gallup voice of corporations like BCE, says its not important that the web is now accessed interactively, not passively, Welcome To The Blogosphere: Population 27.2 Million And Growing

For us ,the users , the cyber citizens of the internet convergance and cross platform use is having a web page, email, and blogging, having a pay pal account and doing business on e-bay or buying from Amazon .com, reaing our news online rather than subscribing to a paper, researching using a search engine, downloading information, music, files, uploading information and playing games.

Whew no wonder we never get out much.

Disrupto-Memes: First fired for blogging, now quit to blog

Will Richardson, author of Weblog-ed: The Read/Write Web in the Classroom has announced that he's quitting his job as a school teacher to focus on his popular edu-blog and blog evangelism. For what it's worth, a Jux2 search finds the following numbers: "fired for blogging" Google (69,000) Yahoo! (90,300) MSN (18,658) vs. "quit to blog" Google (34) Yahoo! (3)

David Wiley of OpenContent.org put it nicely in a recent speech to the US Department of Education's Commission on the Future of Higher Education: as global culture shifts towards information and learning being available on demand, mobile, personalized, remixable and sharable - traditional institutions are threatened by declining relevance. Wiley notes the growing importance of private certification as part of this. I would contend that this may even be the case only for people like Will Richardson (above) - perhaps some of the most high-energy, innovative and engaged people in traditional institutions like education.

My favorite headline for this story though is this one:

Blogs Replicating Like Tribbles On Heat

The Trouble With Tribbles

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