Part 1: Technorati releases "State of the Blogosphere"

State of the Blogosphere 2008: Technorati Numbers Indicate Blogging Is Niche and Slowing

Technorati says blogging is mainstream, we think the numbers indicate otherwise.

Blog search engine and ad network Technorati released its 5th annual State of the Blogosphere report and the numbers are quite interesting. Technorati says its findings indicate that blogging is now mainstream. We're not so sure. Although reading blogs is becoming increasingly mainstream, is writing them?

Popularity of Blogging

In 2004, the first year Technorati issued a State of the Blogosphere report, the company said it was tracking 4 million blogs. By October of 2005that number had risen to 19.6 million and between 2% and 8% of new blogs created each day were judged to be fake or spam blogs. In April of2007 that number was up to 70 million blogs that the company had effectively indexed and today the number is up to to 133 million total blogs indexed since the company started indexing blogs. So the number nearly doubled in the last year.

Of those 133 million blogs that Technorati has indexed - guess how many of them have been posted to in the last 7 days? 1.1% of them, or 1.5 million total...

US: Part 1: Technorati releases "State of the Blogosphere"

Posted by Lauren Drablier on September 23, 2008 at 8:20 AM

Blogs of the past were considered a tool for amateurs and were casually dismissed by the media industry.  Today, everything has changed;  blogging has significantly altered the landscape of the news industry.  According to the survey, blogs have become a "global phenomenon that has hit the mainstream".

An astounding 95% of the top 100 US newspapers have reporter blogs.  They have become a vital part of reporting, "The lines between what is a blog and what is a mainstream media site become less clear."

The shift in the attitude towards blogging has been explored in the first part of an annual report published byTechnorati, entitled, "State of the Blogosphere."  Part I, "Who are the Bloggers?" attempts to unearth and analyze the trends and themes of blogging and bloggers. ..

State Of The Blogosphere: Get To 100K Uniques, Make $75K/year

Technorati, the blog search engine, put out Part I of its sporadic (now-annual?) State of the Blogosphere report this week. This year, it conducted a random survey of 1,079 random bloggers (a statistically significant sample) to paint a more detailed picture of just who exactly is out there blogging. Technorati has indexed a total of 133 million blogs since 2002. In terms of how many are active, 7.5 million blogs have added a new post during the last four months, and 1.5 million have been updated during the last week.

And the average blog that runs ads, according to Technorati, is actually making money:

Among those with advertising, the mean annual investment in their blog is $1,800, but it’s paying off. The mean annual revenue is $6,000 with $75K+ in revenue for those with 100,000 or more unique visitors per month.

The $6,000 a year I can believe. The $75,000 figure is harder to swallow, especially with only 100,000 visitors a month. But directionally there is no doubt that blogs are bringing in more cash...