The US media is now bloated with the news about Blogs. A survey by PEW Inernet & American Life Project named as State of Blogging[PDF] in America, has done all the good to float the news about blogs and their mammoth growth in the year 2004.
Interestigly the report conveys,
Blog creators are more likely to be:
Men: 57% are male (An older report says bloggers are mostly women)
Young: 48% are under age 30
Relatively well off financially: 42% live in households earning over $50,000
Well educated: 39% have college or graduate degrees
And as BBC sums it up –
Blogging in America –
Blog readership has shot up by 58% in 2004
Eight million have created a blog
27% of online Americans have read a blog
5% use RSS aggregators to get news and other information
12% of online Americans have posted comments on blogs
Only 38% of online Americans have heard about blogs
In India, its still a long way to go. In the urban India, we desperately need broadband available, broadly and ofcourse cheaply. Then let’s teach the kindergarten kids about googling. Even if they start blogging at 3rd grade, we can have some classy writers at teens. We are awfully short of children literature in India. In Tamil, the genre of Tamil Children literature is nearly extinct. Probably those teenage bloggers can bring that genre back to life. I dream of that.
kirukkal.com 
15 responses to “State of Blogging”
Lazy, my contrarian brain is humming loudly – the chart seems to show there are only about four unique readers for every blog creator.
Do we really need so many blogs?
Maybe 2005 should be the Year of the Good Blog. Of course, I realize the internet is free shouting space but really, only a fraction of these blogs are going to make a difference.
The way I see the blog – people who used to frequent ‘fully democratic’ chat rooms are drifting towards the blog which is more of a ‘controlled space’ with an unquestioned leader…
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Your last line sums it up. and it’s very true. The unquestioned leader, if chooses to be unquestioned will have no followers in the long run. He will become a unread blogger. Right ?
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There may be other examples which might prove me wrong but the way I look at it is, articles you write on a daily/weekly basis are not what I expect you to.
But on a longer term, I find that there needs to be an matching of our (the leader and his readers) wavelengths. This is something the reader can’t get you to change, can they? Either the stars align or they don’t.
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Ashok, I know what you are trying to see. But i don’t know if you are using ‘vanjaapughachiani’.
BTW, can you detail on you previous comment. I’m curious to hear from you just to know if that unquestioned leader is me 😉
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To be honest, the readers can get you to change. for good as well as for bad. But as Ashokamithran puts it, ” An author shouldn’t be writing for an audience”. I believe there is a hiden truth . It’s a virtute which most of the bloggers, authors and anybody who uses a pen for writing need to attain. I’m trying earnestly.
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its every mans dream, but me thinks maran is trying his best.
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We need to see this from two different perspectives.
For a reader, its not a question of reading something which is written. But its basically something which he wants to read.
For a writer it always creates a dilemma whether to write for his audience or write something which he wants to.
I honestly feel that it should be the latter. The moment he starts writing for his audience, he loses his individuality. Readers are very many and it may not be possible to gauge what their expectations are. Though I agree that the writer has to take into consideration the comments of the readers while writing, but that should not become the driving force.
Frankly, I read lazys blog for his creativity and simple style, though I might not agree with him on certain aspects or certain things he writes may not interest me. But I will continue to visit his blog because I am certain that he will write something which will interests me.
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Vasant – Interesting and it gets better 😉 Thanks for the feedback. This post wasn’t intended at anything. It was just a post. But as it turns out to achieve responses that really really helps me.
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vanjaapughachiani: I don’t know what this means but yes, this is your blog and nobody can take it away from you… But then we might read other blogs too. (Well, I just read one more. My school friend who now lives in Kenya and writes unnaturally quirky stuff.) Does that explain my previous post?
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I remember the time when it used to be that, blog writers are more likely to be females 😉
More and more people are taking up to blogging nowaydas – to express emotion, feelings, comments, criticism and to communicate information with others, fast.
I don not believe that it is the lack of broadband that limits the spread of blogging. For me, I take the same time, sometime more, to create and edit blogs – only if images are involved, does the speed of the connection really matter.
But I cannot think og anything else impeding the spread of blogs.
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Hi Guru, since this discussion is veering towards does some body write for an audience or not, the following article (in Tamil) might add a perspective.
http://www.thinnai.com/janak.html
It is Thi. Jaa’s explanation of why and what he writes. You probably might have read it earlier.
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Chenthil – Thanks. I haven’t read it before. If you are anyone has pointers like this where known authors say why/how they write, please contribute. I would love to read them
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Blogs are here to stay.More and more people will start blogging.Blogs can act as a strong alternative media
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laughed all the way through
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nice weblog and loved this post
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