I’m late on this, but in case you did not see it last week, Pew released a study on blogs. Gary has the highlights. Net net: It’s happening, folks.
Highlights:
• 7% of the 120 million U.S. adults who use the internet say they have created a blog or web-based diary. That represents more than 8 million people. • 27% of internet users say they read blogs, a 58% jump from the 17% who told us they were blog readers in February. This means that by the end of 2004 32 million Americans were blog readers.
• 5% of internet users say they use RSS aggregators or XML readers to get the news and other information delivered from blogs and content-rich Web sites as it is posted online. This is a first-time measurement from our surveys and is an indicator that this application is gaining an impressive foothold.
Thanks for alerting me to this study. Blogging is already having an impact on commerce and communication, Much of it, no doubt, we’ll lament, just as the internet pioneers objected to the commodification of the web. I get more love letters now that I’m blogging.
I’d love to see the research in more detail. For instance, 27% say they read blogs. But how many of the 8 million blogs out there are being read by that 27%?