December 2nd, 2007
It occurred to me this morning that I haven’t seen any recent reports about the number of blogs in the blogosphere. I posted a query on Twitter, and Luis Suarez (no, not the Luis Suarez who was voted European Footballer of the Year in 1960, but the Knowledge Management whiz at IBM) responded that he had heard Technorati was now monitoring 110 million blogs (from 71 million in the spring of 2007).
That gave me the clue that I should simply visit the Technorati site, to see what the nice folks there have to say. And on the “about” page, I found these two interesting tidbits. First:
“Currently tracking 112.8 million blogs and over 250 million pieces of tagged social media.”
and then this:
“The World Live Web is incredibly active, and according to Technorati data, there are over 175,000 new blogs (that’s just blogs) every day. Bloggers update their blogs regularly to the tune of over 1.6 million posts per day, or over 18 updates a second. “
This is also a good illustration of the “long tail” concept. My humble blog doesn’t get very much traffic, and doesn’t generate a penny of revenue for me; but according to Technorati, I’m in the top one-tenth of one percent of all blogs … which means that 99.9% of all blogs are less popular than mine. And yet, collectively, they add up to an enormous readership; it’s the collection of all 112 million blogs that makes the Internet such a vibrant place today.
By the way, if you’d like to know what Technorati says are the top ten blogs, in terms of popularity, here they are:
- WordPress (which I use to write and edit my own blog postings)
- Engadget
- Gizmodo
- Techcrunch
- BoingBoing
- The Huffington Post
- Lifehacker
- Ars Technica
- Mashable! The Social Networking Blog
- Blog di Beppe Grillo
December 2nd, 2007 at 7:32 pm
Great post, Ed! Thanks for the link love and for distinguishing my name from the footballer’s. I get that question many many times! heh
I must say that I enjoyed your reflection on the popularity of the blogs and just recently I read some where how so-called A-List bloggers are finding less and less time to blog, but things are far too demanding, so was thinking I would be rather grateful myself that I don’t have much of a readership, which allows me to enjoy the blogging and connecting with other folks.
Perhaps that is the price of popularity and somehow I am surely glad I am not that popular, because it is helping me to still enjoy what I started a couple of years back on the Internet and several other years behind the corporate firewall.
So surely agree with your reflection and hope it would continue that way for many months to come!
Cheers!
Luis
December 3rd, 2007 at 12:48 am
Ah, Luis … sometimes I think you really ARE that Spanish footballer! Or maybe his son! Well, anyway, we all love your blog postings and your Twitter tweets … Keep up the good work!
Ed
December 3rd, 2007 at 3:22 pm
Hi Ed! Thanks much for the kind words and kind feedback! We shall keep going at it, indeed! Resuming blogging activities as well in the next few hours with the first of a bunch of blog posts from last week’s iForum event I attended. You will enjoy the first post I am putting together, by the way. When you read it, you will see what I mean
Thanks again and will speak to you soon!
December 15th, 2007 at 9:30 am
very interesting, but I don’t agree with you
Idetrorce