This is an updated study that looks at the size of blogs, trends in personal publishing and how it fits into social networking.
I found a few interesting points that really hit home:
- 112MM users read blogs in the US today (about 50% of the total audience)
- Estimates increase blog readership to 60% by 2014
- 26MM people blog (have an active blog) - note we believe there are over 100MM blogs online today, though most are inactive or have no traffic
- Blogging is up overall, though younger segments are less likely to blog now there are social networking platform
- The shift in younger audience is not really a loss of blogging, it is more technology coming in to solve a problem that was being temporarily solved via a blogging platform
- In 2009, of the 'US Social Media Users', over 85% used Facebook, 46% used MySpace (down about 35% versus 2009), and 15% blogged
- Rates of blog reading will rise through 2014. The increases will be driven by a confluence between blogs and traditional media and by growing use of corporate blogs.
- Social media will steer traffic to blog sites. However, this will be a double-edged sword, as social venues also inhibit blogging by providing users with powerful platforms of self-expression.
- Blogging platform Typepad estimated that including a Facebook “like” widget to a blog sidebar resulted in a 50% increase in traffic from Facebook to that blog.
- Adding the Facebook widget to blog post footers resulted in a 200% traffic increase.
