Every year for the past couple of years, David Sifry, founder and CEO of Technorati, releases a “State of the Blogosphere” report. See Part I and Part II.
According to the Daily Posting Volume chart, Technorati tracks 1.2 million posts per day, about 50,000 per hour.
Technorati currently tracks 26.6 million blogs, and the blogosphere has been doubling in size every five months. Mainstream media web sites still lead blogs in incoming links, but I suspect those numbers will begin to shift in the coming years as more bloggers do original reporting.
Sifry’s report has gotten coverage in the mainstream media, including the Sun-Sentinel and New York Times:
If the blogosphere continues to expand at this rate, every person who has Internet access will be a blogger before long, if not an actual reader of blogs. The conventional media - this very newspaper, for instance - have often discussed the growing impact of blogging on the coverage of news. Perhaps the strongest indicator of the importance of blogdom isn’t those discussions themselves, but the extent to which media outlets are creating blogs - or bloglike manifestations - of their own.
…
It’s natural enough to think of the growth of the blogosphere as a merely technical phenomenon. But it’s also a profoundly human phenomenon, a way of expanding and, in some sense, reifying the ephemeral daily conversation that humans engage in.
Related — Technorati: How (and Why) to Claim Your Blog
First-time commenters must be approved before comment appears. Please do not submit twice.
February 22nd, 2006 at 4:27 pm
While bloggers have provided and will continue to provide outstanding commentary and news analysis, I am somewhat doubtful that bloggers will ever do any serious, original reporting.
After all, there’s only so much news you can gather from your living room or your basement.
The blogosphere’s strength is not as a news outlet, but as an opinion mill. To do any actual hard reporting requires time, money, know-how and research capabilities that most people simply do not possess.
Like many other conservatives I have serious reservations about how some people in the msm report on certain stories. But love them or hate them, the established, credentialed professional media is necessary, and they are here to stay.
The reality is that blogs are still relatively obscure and many people, be they conservative or liberal probably can’t name even one major blog. Another thing to consider is the limited number of blog readers out there. While an average blogger is doing very well to attract a following of around a few hundred or even a few thousand, that size of an audience would put even the smallest small market TV stations and daily newspapers out of business. The obvious exception is the narrow handful of blogs that attract upwards of 50,000 or more readers per day. But even these focus on commentary, and lack any real capacity to gather fresh news that nobody else has gotten to first.
So, no. Blogs make wonderful soapboxes, and a few of them make really wonderful soapboxes, but blogs as they are today will never serve as serious news outlets. Make no mistake, I love blogs, I love the blogosphere and I am firmly convinced that blogs are and will continue to become important weapons in the arena of ideas. I just don’t see bloggers coming on strong in the news business. Consider that the blogosphere’s last major crack at breaking news was exposing Rathergate. That was two whole years ago. I don’t even count the Eason Jordon scandal, because outside of a few select circles, that story never garnered any real attention. As bloggers, we generate views, not news. It is important for us to accept that in order for us to build on what works.
Now that I have sufficiently offended the entire blogosphere, I must now return to my studies.
March 10th, 2006 at 7:11 pm
State of the Blogosphere, February 2006 - David Sifry, Sifry’s Alerts
The founder and CEO of Technorati gives his annual State of the Blogosphere address.
Part 1: On Blogosphere Growth
Part 2: Beyond Search