According to Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere 2008 report, lines between blogs and mainstream media Web sites are becoming less and less clear. As the Blogosphere grows in size and influence, larger blogs increasingly take on traditional-media attributes, while mainsteam sites incorporate blog styles and formats. Professional and user-generated media types are also merging in more literal ways: practically all (95%) of the top U.S. newspapers have reporter blogs.
Technorati was founded in 2004 to help bloggers collect, highlight and distribute content. Today, the blog search engine tracks blogs in 81 languages and has over 1.2 registered users. Over 1,000 bloggers from 66 countries participated in Technorati’s 2008 survey.
Market research firms that have tried to quantify the Blogosphere have arrived at disparate yet impressive numbers of bloggers and blog readers. According to comScore MediaMetrix, blogs attract 78 million unique visitors in the U.S. Studies by eMarketer and Unversal McCann suggest that half of all Internet users and 77% of active users read blogs. Universal McCann estimates that 184 million people worldwide have started blogs and 346 million people read them.
More important than their quantity is blogs’ popularity. Technorati says that blogs are among top-10 Web sites across all key categories.
In addition, blogs are generating revenue, mostly with advertising. While averages remain as low as most microstock photographers’ earnings, blogs with 100,000 or more unique visitors per month have disclosed annual revenues in excess of $75,000. For respondents to the Technorati survey, the mean annual investment in their blogs is $1,800.
Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere 2008 provides a wealth of additional information, from the types of topics commonly covered to demographic, psychographic and financial details.