I have said it already in prior posts, but I am convinced that the global nature of the blogosphere and its rapid global penetration is misunderstood...

...and poorly represented in the US-centric view of blogging. According to Dave Sifry’s post on the state of the blogosphere (part two), April 2006, less than a third of all posts are now written in English.

I have already covered some of the major Web 2.0 developments that could serve as test countries for marketing innovation, from the French blogging penetration to the amazing Korean social networking phenomenon. I decided to explore a smaller country and the impact Web 2.0 was having there.

One of the great benefits of working at HP is that I have access to a wealth of global and local technology knowledge in virtually every country in the world. You may remember, from my post on the human face of your blog’s traffic, my colleague Jorge Luis Revilla, who works as a project manager for HP Peru, but also happens to be one of the top 5 bloggers in the country with El Metaverso de JL. I connected with him to better understand the Peru blogging scene and he painted for me a fascinating picture.

Perú is a country with 26 million people, but only 5% of them own a PC. At the same time, more than 50% of the population has access to the Internet. Internet Cafes are a national phenomenon and there are more than 3,000 of them throughout the country, where people pay an average of 50 cents for an hour of connection. Most of the time, people in Internet cafes use email, chat and VoIP to keep in touch with distant relatives. Other Internet services such as video, music and even reading the news are limited to the lucky 5% with a home PC.

There are approximately 3000 Peruvian blogs registered in the two main local directories (BlogsPeru.com and PeruBlogs.com). However, according to a report published a few months ago, only 900 are updated regularly.

The top blogs in Perú cover a variety of topics. The #1 Blog is Blogsperu's own blog about the Peruvian Blogosphere. Number 2, Pueblo Vruto is a protest blog, which complains about the government, society and many other things! Jorge's blog is #3 and covers topics such as technology, marketing, gadgets, politics, etc.

The local media is watching the blog phenomenon and El Comercio, a respected local newspaper, recently wrote about them, but focused mainly on blogs of personal nature as online versions of the old diaries. They didn’t realize that blog quantity does not equal post quantity. More than half of the active blogs are personal but thematic blogs generate 80% of the content.

Most of the blog readers are IT workers, geeks and computer aficionados. Peru is still in the very early stages. But even in a country with 5% PC penetration, the blogosphere is starting to take hold.

Thanks JL!