I was reading SavvySolo and I found this post: The Week That Blogging Died. Basically; the Chicago Tribune has claimed, according to Gallup pollsters, that blog readership is down (here; it’s a hard read - I suggest the blog post)^{(registration required, BugMeNot login available)}.

These Gallup polls claim that 9%, of the 1 billion, of Internet users frequently read blogs; 11% occasionally; 13% rarely read them; and 66% never do. This is essentially unchanged from last year’s. So 20% of people use the Internet for reading blogs. 87% of people use it for email, 72% for news and weather, 52% use it for shopping and travel planning. I wonder out of that 72% how many are reading blogs without realising.

Michael Pollock has shown just to what extent blogs have grown - which aren’t reflected in the above poll. He’s chosen 3 A-list blogs: Lifehacker, Gizmodo and Problogger as his examples.

Using these blogs Sitemeter statistics, he has tracked their growth. In Feb 05 Lifehacker had 400,000 visitors, last month they had 2 million; that’s a massive growth! Gizmodo had a growth of 3.5 million, from 4.5 million in Feb 05; not quite as impressive proportion wise as Lifehacker, but much more significant. Why was it significant? 3,500,000 more readers in a year, on just one blog, shows the growth in interest in blogs. And finally, Problogger. Problogger is mainly used by those already in the blogosphere; but they have had an 11 fold increase from last year, rising from 10k to 110k. That is probably the most significant. Presuming the majority of readers are blog pros, semi-pros, and semi-pro wannabes; it can be assumed they are far more people how blog as a hobby. These people will probably also read lots to stay up to date.

Many media companies such as the BBC and the Guardian Unlimited and The Times now have blogs. Are the companies scared? Or do they think of this simply as a new generation of media? I’m pretty certain some people must pick up papers and visit these blogs - increasing the reading of them.

At the moment you’re reading this, many more blogs will be made, currently there’s nearly 30,000,000 blogs listed on Technorati. And remember, not all blogs are listed on Technorati, just the good ones!

Tags: blog, blogosphere, web 2, web2, web 2.0, blogging, media