A Report on Blogging

The 2008 State of the Blogosphere is being released in parts and makes for some darn fine reading. The five parts are being published one a day through the end of the week. Today is Tuesday so that means we’ve seen two: Who are the Bloggers and The What and The Why of Blogging.

Here’s what I’ve learned so far:

• Blogging is addictive: Half of bloggers are on their second blog, and 59 percent have been blogging for more than two years.
• Two-thirds of bloggers are male. Almost half have attended graduate school and 44 percent are parents. (I love that I don’t fit into any of those categories.)
• There are almost one million new blog posts created every day. We have officially gone mainstream!
• The preferred blogging style is sincere, conversational, expert and humorous. (check, check, check and check! Or at least I hope that last one is a check…)
• The mean annual revenue is $6,000 with $75K+ in revenue for those with 100,000 or more unique visitors per month.

Wait, let me re-read that last one…

Okay, what nice drugs are these people on? And how can I get some?

I’m sorry, but the only people making $75,000 a year for their blogging efforts are the royal blogging family and those who earn at least $74,999 from their “real job”. Sure, there are probably a few blogs out there pulling that much revenue in, but also they’re bringing in way more uniques than 100,000. Add some more zeros to that number. Or maybe I’m wrong and I need to get blogging for myself and start tricking people into reading and clicking on things. I know, that’s what I’ll do in New York.

One of the most interesting stats was that despite going mainstream, blogging is slowing down. Last year, there were 1.5 million new blog posts published every day, whereas this year there’s only about 900,000. Is that all surprising? No, it’s not. Have you met FriendFeed and Twitter? They’re stealing your blog posts. They let you get out your quick thoughts and observations with zero overhead.

For me, this was no more evident than around 11:30am yesterday when I let the world know of my plans to revisit my roots on the East Coast. A year ago, that news would have been blogged. It would have hit TechMeme. The conversation would have been spread via the tech blogosphere. But that’s not how it went down yesterday. The news of my leaving spread rapidly and instantaneously, through Twitter. That’s where people are going to share quick information, that’s where they’re going to get the latest news, and that’s where they’re going to find the conversation — Twitter and FriendFeed.

Twitter and FriendFeed are the new blogs. Old blogs are the new mainstream media. It’s an awesome world we live in.

I’m probably just being a dork, but I find it exciting. I love that people are creating platforms like Twitter that allow people to communicate so easily and so quickly. Before you had to go through the arduous task of calling someone or writing these things called “letters” to share your story. Then you had to construct a blog post of a couple hundred words. Now you can just go to Twitter and express your anguish that Chuck from Gossip Girl is a royal jerk and that you’d like to back over him with your Aveo. Slowly. And then run over him. Technology is amazing.

Blogging may be “slowing”, but the conversation is growing faster than ever. And that’s what we should be watching. Can’t wait to see what we learn tomorrow!

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.

See Lisa's author page for links to connect on social media.