Dave Sifry’s State Of The Live Web

Well, we finally got it. David Sifry has released his quarterly State of the Blogosphere, actually make that the State of the Live Web. With the blogosphere growing David’s report has got a brand new name. Be impressed.

According to David’s report, Technorati is now tracking more than 70 million blogs, with about 120,000 new blogs being created every day worldwide. For the non-math majors out there (holla!), that’s 1.4 blogs created each second. Hmm, that’s a lot of people trying to compete with my Friday Recap. I’m not sure I like that.

I mean, yey, welcome to the blogosphere, new friends!

David’s report revealed some interesting stats and findings that I wasn’t aware of. For example, David notes that Technorati is no longer just a blog search engine. It has become the "main aggregation point for all forms of social media on the Web". I mentioned briefly the other day how the tagging revolution has allowed Technorati to grow where traditional engines haven’t, but even so, that’s a mighty big statement from David. At the same time, I don’t doubt it. It’s just amazing to me that Technorati, and the Web in general, has seen that much growth in just four years.

Another fun fact is that spam blogs seem to peak during the holiday season, with 11,000 blogs being created each and every day in December. That’s insane; can’t you just smell all the Made For AdSense sites? Maybe there should be a freeze period from Thanksgiving to January 1st where people can’t create any new blogs. Wouldn’t that be fun? Okay, no, I suppose that idea is just as insane. Moving along then…

A third nugget from David is that while blogging continues to grow, the number of blog posts made per day is declining. I figure that’s because there’s a lot more places to "post" today. Bloggers are also the same demographic posting things on YouTube, they’re tagging things on del.icio.us and they’re digging things on Digg. There are lots of new places to blog and post and yet there remain 24 hours in a day. Until this gets fixed, people’s attention will remain split.

I think it also represents maturation in the space. Instead of posting meaningless posts throughout the day, the quality of blogging has increased, which has therefore decreased the number of entries being produced. Or maybe the "fad" aspect of blogging is dying down and the lame LiveJournals have hung up their Kleenex.

Internationally, blogs have seen an enormous growth. Japanese blogs (37 percent) now outnumber English blogs (36 percent), and Italian blogs grew enough to overtake Spanish blogs in the number four spot. Growth is also evident in the Middle East with Farsi entering the top ten languages.

If you haven’t read through David’s report, I’d most definitely encourage it. There are lots of interesting stats and pretty line graphs to check out.

The only real thing I take issue with is now referring to the blogosphere as "the live Web". What does that mean? Was it not just as live before? It seems like "live" is being associated with user’s actively tagging. And while, yes, tagging has increased, exploded even, I don’t think has made the Web any more "alive". That’s saying it was dead or static before.

I also wonder how long it will be before David stops separating blogs from traditional and mainstream media. I don’t think there’s a different on the Web anymore. An article on search from Search Engine Land or Search Engine Journal is just as informative, if not more, than any article the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times would put out. I think. I think it’s time to drop the labels.

Lisa Barone is a writer, content marketer & VP of strategy at Overit Media. She's also a very active Twitterer, much to the dismay of the rest of the world.

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