133 million: the number of blogs indexed by Technorati since 2002. Over the past week, Technorati has been releasing its State of the Blogosphere 2008 report.
And while not all of those blogs may not be active, the growth of blogs (as tracked by Technorati) over the past five years is remarkable.
- October 2004: 4 million
- August 2005: 14 million
- April 2006: 35 million
- April 2007: 70 million
- September 2008: 133 million
What does this mean?
On the upside, it’s more likely now than before that:
- You, your customers, your prospects, and your competitors are reading and writing blogs
- Better tools to interact with the medium exist for reading, filtering, authoring, and tracking
- You can say the word “blog” in conversation without feeling silly
On the downside, it’s more likely now than before that:
- Spam related to your business interests lives in “splogs”
- Traditional marketing approaches will find new ways to make consumers hate the medium
- Your “regular” friends know what you mean but still think blogging is for geeks
The latest Technorati report finds that “top bloggers” most often consider their content news. Increasingly, we’re seeing traditional media web sites look more like blogs (e.g. WSJ.com’s recent redesign).
With greater adoption, will it be much longer before we start dropping the word “blog” as a descriptor, the same way we dropped the “.com” from company names in 2002? (maybe if only to be able to carry on a conversation about our work without hearing snickers…)
Pete,
Thanks for sharing. My reaction: 133,000,000 creates a lot of noise. To break through and get noticed, we need to understand who we are writing for and exceed their wants and needs. Not much different from running a business, and if we are a business blog, we better write for the readers, not for ourselves.
It almost makes you wonder if blogging is as effective as other mediums. Yes content is king and what better way to add more content every single day than with blogging, but it almost becomes mundane and really the opposite of marketing which is to stand out and be different and satisfy your niche’s needs. I am hoping for something more new to emerge that I can get a first mover advantage on rather than follow the pack to who knows where.
Great advice – stay focused on the audience and the rest will follow.
Levon, to your point I think that community size matters and blogs are typically individually owned and operated…which makes aggregating sites more valuable.
Wow that number is staggering in comparison with the years prior. Thanks so much for sharing!
Thanks for the statistics Peter.
Just goes to show that when you get a highway it seems to attract traffic.
Looks to me like we’re into the same territory as when the internet was first invented and the term ‘Information Superhighway’ was invented. Back then I always thought it was a Data Highway and the trick would be to find the information. As a result we have SEARCH companies and the rise of Google as a an advertising juggernaut masquerading as a search company. I believe the same is going to happen with Blogs but now it is so much easier to gather a circle of like minded people and share valuable information rather than putting up information and trying to get people to read it. Social interaction through blogging should produce far better outcomes because the thoughts of a group of people are always better than a single lone voice!!
Those numbers are not particularly staggering to me since I have been on the Internet before it was cool. That is, before about 1994.
It has grown incredibly since then, and I have no added problem finding the information I need. In fact, if anything, the information quality *available* on the Internet has improved.
I rely on others to point me to good sources of content and then I go check those sources out. If I like what I see, maybe I tell some people about it. The effect can cascade and more and more people will gravitate toward good content and the static will largely be ignored (It just takes up a bit of disk space). That is the way of the Internet and all its incarnations.
This sort of cascading effect can point people toward low quality content but to that we can only say, “de gustibus non est disputandum.”
It means that people are being updated and adapting technologies now a days.