They Blog, I Blog, We All Blog

Blogging could not be more topical given what has been happening in Iran - and bloggers and other mediums, a la Twitter and YouTube, being just about the only source of information of what is happening in the country post the recent election.

It is therefore timely that the Nieman Report - put out by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard - has an article "They Blog, I Blog, We all Blog" about blogging, its scope and impact and a recently released book, The Blogging Revolution:

"An Australian blogger interviews dissident bloggers worldwide, and in his book he explains why what they do matters and who is trying to stop them."

Some interesting stats from the article:

"When I started my News Dissector blog (www.newsdissector.com/blog/) 10 years ago, blogging was an emerging media form. No longer, and here are U.S. stats that offer a glimpse at the profound changes that have taken place (with more added every day):

Now more than 12 million American adults maintain a blog.

More than 147 million American adults use the Internet; 57 million read blogs. More than one-third of today’s blog readers started reading them in 2005 or 2006.

More than 120,000 blogs are created each day: Nine percent of Internet users claim to have created one, and included among these people are six percent of the U.S. adult population.

Among bloggers, 1.7 million Americans list making money as one of the reasons they blog. Of companies surveyed, 89 percent indicate that blogs will be more important to their business during the next five years. A bit more than half of blog readers shop online.

Technorati tracks more than 70 million blogs.

Nearly one quarter of the Web’s 100 most popular sites are blogs. There are more than 1.4 million new blog posts made each day.

Blog readers average 23 hours online each week."

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Mahler's Prodigal Son

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