The Media Post reports that few blogs have the traction of more traditional Web sites. It cites a a new survey by Perseus that says most bloggers are teen-age girls who update twice a month. The Perseus survey was done for the just-concluded BloggerCon. FYI: I am not a teenage girl and I am doing my darndest to update this blog more than twice a month. From that story:
The study fleshed out demographics on the blogging population, which it said with 90% being created and written by people between the ages of 13 and 29. Fifty-one percent of bloggers are between 13 and 19, and 39% are between 20 and 29. Just under 6% are between 30 and 39, with 1.3% or under between 10-12, 40-49, 50-59 and 60-69. A slight majority of bloggers (56%) are female, and the study found they're more likely to stick to it than males.
Hey David — Maybe deep inside there is a teenage girl trying to break free. Perhaps blogging is cathartic, revelatory, etc.
Kidding.
Paul K.
There was a really good thread at BlogsCanada about this topic. – bree
Thanks for the pointer, Bree. The posters at BlogsCanada make some good points about methodology, particularly when it comes to group blogs and MT blogs. Mind you, the quibble about the size of the sample may hold up. A sample size of a few thousand should return accurate results for a given population of millions, provided the sample is chosen using an algorithm that produces a true 'random' sample. I'm not convinced the Perseus sample was indeed 'random'.
All that said: I'm still skeptical about the worth and import of the blogosphere at this point, much as I believe in its potential. The Perseus study may be a bit over the top but I'd say there's easily been too much hype that blogs will change the world. I think there's enough anecdotal evidence and some statistical surveys to suggest that compared to, say, e-mail, blogging is still a very small activity on the Internet.