Technorati’s David Sifry has given an update about the state of the Blogosphere. His blog search engine, Technorati, currently tracks 27.2 Million weblogs, and the blogosphere continues to double about every 5.5 months. The blogosphere is over 60 times bigger than it was only 3 years ago. 75,000 new weblogs are created every day and 13.7 million bloggers are still posting 3 months after their blogs are created.
State of the Blogosphere, February 2006 Part 1: On Blogosphere Growth:
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One thing that seems to be relatively ignored by trackig agencies like Technorati is a qualitative evaluation. With everything from spam bloggers to Myspace flooding the blogosphere we have to really consider just what those numbers mean.
What are these millions of blogs about, who is writing them and what are they trying to acccomplish? When online publishing became so simple people could say “why not” instead of “why” they started to publish anything and everything their whims dictate.
At this point the blogosphere is a lot like a giant a crowded bar. The bulk of the talking is about small personal stuff that only matters to the people directly involved. A whole lot of it is just plain trite garbage and there are a few people off in the corners having some really cool conversations about art, politics, green design, marketing or whatever…
Ultimately, my point is that numbers about the blogosphere as a whole are becoming less and less meaningful. This trend can only continue until we find a way to add real and maybe actionable meaning to those mind blowing numbers. A simple piece of evidence to consider is that even with Technorati tracking 27.2 million blogs, I still have to explain what blog is several times a week.
February 6th, 2006 at 2:00 pm