Monday, July 24, 2006

Amy Gahran posted this interesting article on internet users:

Yesterday, the Pew Internet and American Life Project released an intriguing new report: Bloggers: A Portrait of the Internet's New Storytellers

A few highlights:

* 39% of net users (about 57 million American adults) read blogs -- a significant increase since the fall of 2005. And 8% of net users (about 12 million American adults) keep a blog.
* Most US blogs are personal journals. Most bloggers do not consider their blogging journalism. However, 57% of bloggers include links to original sources either "sometimes" or "often." And 56% spend extra time trying to verify facts they want to include in a post either "sometimes" or "often."
* 54% of bloggers are under 30.
* US bloggers are evenly divided between men and women -- so anyone who continues to ask "where are the women bloggers?" is probably not really looking. (I'm sure this will be a huge topic of conversation at the upcoming BlogHer conference, which I'm attending.)

These were the most common primary blog topics cited:

1. "My life and experiences:" 37%
2. Politics and government: 11%
3. Entertainment: 7%
4. Sports: 6%
5. General news and current events: 5%
6. Business: 5%
7. Technology: 4%
8. Religion, spirituality or faith: 2%
9. Hobbies: 1%
10. Health: 1%

Pew surveyed 7,012 US adults by phone, including 4,753 internet users, 8% of whom are bloggers.

2 comments:

Kay Cooke said...

Wow this is so fascinating - and informative - thanks. I must keep a copy of the statistics.

Di Mackey said...

I was intrigued by it ... :)