Comments on: Why Blogs Won't Die

By: Jeremy C. Wright

Jeremy C. Wright — Thu, 10 Mar 2005 18:04:57 +0000

Which stat? Number of blogs or number of readers?

In America: http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/144/report_display.asp

Almost 38% of Americans read blogs. That’s, what, 120 million? I don’t know, but it’s at least half of my “200 million” number.

American blogging only accounts for about 20% of blogging. Does the number of readers scale? I don’t have firm non-US stats for readers, but I do for writers.

There are more than 30 million bloggers in Asia (just according to the major services), and there are at least 15 million bloggers in south america that aren’t being counted either. There are several south american sites that have 10 million readers for the blogs.

I’d say 50 million / 200 million would be a conservative number.

By: Matt Thornton

Matt Thornton — Thu, 10 Mar 2005 10:08:36 +0000

200m (Jer’s claimed figure) out of 800m internet users is 25%. Actually my figure for people who have a blog was wrong, 50m of 800m is actually 6%.

By: BlogCruiser

BlogCruiser — Thu, 10 Mar 2005 03:22:53 +0000

Matt Thornton,

I think with the stats you presented it comes out closer to 1 out of 138 have a blog and 1 out of 32 people read blogs. Then I can be pretty bad at math though…

By: Matt Thornton

Matt Thornton — Wed, 09 Mar 2005 13:51:34 +0000

Yeh, I’d like to know the source of the stats too. I found this: http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm which, by Jer’s calculations, would say 1 in 8 people have a blog. 1 in 4 regularly read a blog.

Dunno.

By: Jules

Jules — Wed, 09 Mar 2005 06:45:30 +0000

Blogs won’t die, because even if all the news in the world dries up, we’ll always be able to blog about blogging.

By: BlogCruiser

BlogCruiser — Wed, 09 Mar 2005 04:19:33 +0000

I hope you don’t mind me adding a little spin or twist to your blog opinions, ideas and thoughts here. I agree with you blogs are communication on the internet. This is the way I’ve kind of always looked at blogs. Since they have been tagged with the technobabble phrases, jargon or buzz words that companies, groups, industries and governments love to tag things with. Marketing mania seems to work well give air a new name and whoosh maybe we can package and sell it to make profits from something that already exists. Ok, enough of my industry bashing; they do a lot of good things too. Blogs have been around a long time on the internet. They just weren’t called blogs. It’s been difficult actually pinning down a real definition of a blog because it is communication via the internet and that is what it seems to boil down too. We like to define things and it helps communication by doing so. However, at the same time it restricts things too. So we come up with more new names and tags of other items as they evolve from what is happening. Some one just wanted to give this communication a name and it seems to have worked; even though there are many opinions as to what a blog is and the final reality of what a blog really is or has evolved to be has not been made absolute at this point in my opinion. Call it a web page with a content management system a blog. Freelance journalism and publishing to the web can be called a blog. Someone writing and publishing a dairy call it a blog. Someone else keeping a business ezine online could call it a blog. Updates to published company happenings can be called a blog. Other themed and dated hobby info can be called a blog. A community of people discussing and chatting in a chronological order could be called a blog too. I’m sure I could add a hundred more ideas for blogs that may fit. The real way to possibly define a blog might be people publishing their communications on the internet. It’s almost seems silly all the huff and puff about blogs they are an evolving communications on the internet. I don’t even know if we can call it a tool for sure I guess we can if we want. Mostly up to the masses if they take to it, which they apparently have. Now, I guess they will become what ever the dictionary decides them to be. Ok, enough of my bloggity, blog, blah and ranting and rambling almost nonsensically but I’m now published on a blog. “Main stream media vs. bloggers” I still have a hard time getting over a statement like that when neither really exist as any entity except maybe as smaller organized groups of a whole. I like how some one put it on one blog I read, “Old media vs. Blogger not Mainstream Media”. That has a ring to it anyway. Oh well I think I typed I was going to stop my rambling and I guess it’s time to follow that lead. Keep up the great blog by the way! Ooops, I mean communication…:) I also agree blogging is in no way a fad. I remember the days of “computers” being called a fad. Computers have been a long lasting fad if that is the case.

I guess rambling and ranting were just in my blood this evening…I hope you don’t mind… but I guess that is what the delete button is for if you do…

By: lsantos

lsantos — Wed, 09 Mar 2005 00:43:46 +0000

I would very much appreciate if you could tell me wher you got the 50M / 200M figures.
Thank you.

By: Jeremy C. Wright

Jeremy C. Wright — Tue, 08 Mar 2005 18:37:21 +0000

Okay, so only another 100 million to beat the Buddhists. Go us go!

By: Darren

Darren — Tue, 08 Mar 2005 18:35:30 +0000

Because I'm a pedant: those numbers put blogs (writers plus readers) at #6 on the world religion list.