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While Dave Sifry’ ‘State of the Live Web’ report gives a positive spin on blogging growth, the numbers look different if you dig deeper.
According to BusinessWeek, while the total number of blogs ever tracked by Technorati has grown to 70 million from 57 million on Oct ‘06, the number of active blogs updated in the last three months has plateaued at 15.5 million. Therefore, the percentage of active blogs has come down from 27% in Oct ‘06 to 21% in Mar ‘07. What’s more, while the number of new posts per day increased from about 1.3 million to about 1.5 million, the number of English language posts per day dropped to 495,000 in Mar ‘07 from 507,000 in Oct ‘06.
BusinessWeek quotes Gartner -
Given the trend in the average life span of a blogger and the current growth rate of blogs, there are already more than 200 million ex-bloggers. Consequently, the peak number of bloggers will be around 100 million at some point in the first half of 2007.
- and insists that the number of bloggers is peaking and even argues that it might be a good thing for bloggers -
Adam Sarner, an analyst at researcher Gartner Inc. argues that since the audience reading blogs continues to grow, this classic tech cycle of hype and maturity is good news for the remaining blogs. Those left standing are the influencers that attract audiences and advertisers.
While I agree that the data points to the maturation of blogging, I don’t believe that blogging has peaked. How can it, when access to computers and Internet connectivity itself is still limited to a small percentage of the world’s population?
As I have earlier said in my post on the ‘State of the Live Web’ report -
the question we need to ask ourselves is - what new innovations will be needed to take the number of blogs from 70 million to 150 million?
Also See: Techmeme, Valleywag, Matthew Hurst, One by One Media, CNet, Hugh MacLeod.
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[…] Has Blogging Peaked?: that is an ongoing discussion since David Sifry published the latest “State of the Blogosphere”. The article presents some different views on the subject. […]
[…] to Web 2.0 at all. If this is your interpretation - and it is mine - then the assertion that blogging has plateaued does not hold much weight and the potential number of active blogs is closer to 60 million than 15 […]