Teaching Online Journalism

What we now know about blogs

Technorati has released its always-interesting annual State of the Blogosphere report, and this year they surveyed 1,079 bloggers about their histories and current practices. Here are some tidbits I enjoyed:

• U.S. bloggers = 57 percent male (parity is near); European and Asian bloggers = 73 percent male
• Global bloggers, 18 to 24 years old = 9 percent of female, 15 percent of male
• Global bloggers, 25 and older = 91 percent of female, 85 percent of male
• One in four bloggers spends 10 hours or more blogging each week
• 77 percent of the bloggers surveyed comment on other blogs
• Technorati “top authority bloggers” post often — more than half of them post five times a day or more; and they are also twice as likely as other bloggers to tag their blog posts
• Technorati’s database shows that 1.5 million blogs were updated within seven days before the study

What sort of blogging do they do? Technorati asked the bloggers surveyed to categorize their blogs as personal, professional, or corporate (blogging “for your company in an official capacity”):

Four out of five bloggers are personal bloggers who blog about topics of personal interest. About half of bloggers are professional bloggers — blogging is not necessarily their full-time job, but they blog about their industry or profession in an unofficial capacity. 12% of bloggers blog in an official capacity for their company.

However, 40 percent of the bloggers surveyed said their topics were outside of these categories — for example, the 2008 election, alternative energy, art, beauty, blogging, comics, communication, cooking/food, crafts, design, environment, internet/Web 2.0, Jamaica, and media/journalism (source page).

Many bloggers have more than one blog, and 59 percent “have been blogging for two years or more.”

Advertising: Female bloggers were found to be more clued in about advertising: 16 percent of women used an ad network, compared with 7 percent of men; 41 percent of women used an affiliate newtork, compared with 32 percent of men.

Community: Women were more likely than men to use a blogroll, link to other blogs, appear in blog directories, and produce content for other blogs (source page).

Perks: The survey also indicated that blogging yields benefits to the bloggers.

One in four have been invited to participate in an event as a result of their blog, one in five have contributed to a print publication as a result of their blog, and almost as many have found themselves on TV and/or on the radio (source page).

Traffic: Half of the active blogs in the survey attract more than 1,000 visitors per month. (I think that number is too low to be interesting, but I guess it shows that these blogs are not merely diaries for the author and a handful of friends to read.)

10 most used tags: News, Music, Video, Internet, Blog, Politics, Life, Business, Videos, Movies.

Making money: Although the majority earn little or no money from their blogs, there are some bloggers who profit handsomely.

Among active bloggers that we surveyed, the average income was $75,000 for those who had 100,000 or more unique visitors per month (some of whom had more than 1 million visitors each month). The median annual income for this group is significantly lower — $22,000.

In the section of the report titled The How of Blogging, there are some nifty charts showing popularity rising and falling for certain tags over a particular time period, e.g. “Obama” in September 2008.

Another chart on that page shows tools used on the blogs, such as video hosting or Twitter feeds; this would make a nice list for a graduate student project.

There’s another nice chart listing the activities of “active Web 2.0 participants” on the page titled Brands Enter the Blogosphere.

Tags: culture, online, research

Categories: blogging