Posted on 08/08/2005 4:13:34 PM PDT by kristinn
U.S. blog readership in the first quarter jumped 45 percent to 49.5 million people, or one-sixth of the total U.S. population, a report said Monday, suggesting the blogosphere is becoming increasingly alluring to online advertisers.
The increase means 30 percent of U.S. Internet users visited blog sites in the quarter, according to the comScore Media Metrix report.
In the quarter, Google’s Blogspot had 19 million unique visitors, which comScore noted was more than big mainstream media sites NYTimes.com, USAToday.com, and WashingtonPost.com. However, these visitors were spread around Blogspot’s millions of individual sites.
As far as advertisers are concerned, blog readers are a desirable demographic—young, wealthy, likely to shop online, and with high-speed Internet connections. They visit 77 percent more web pages than the average Internet user.
The most popular blogs were Free Republic with 3.6 million visitors, Drudge Report with 2.3 million, Fleshbot (a Gawker Media blog) with 1.2 million, followed by Gawker and Fark, both with 1.1 million. Regularly updated blogs won a huge portion of the overall visits. Drudge Report alone had 44.3 million visits.
Most popular were political blogs followed by “hipster” lifestyle blogs, tech blogs, and blogs written by women, comScore noted.
However, blog readership tails off rather quickly, with the majority of blogs having under 100 visitors a day, according to Rick Bruner, director of research for DoubleClick, who co-authored the comScore report.
The comScore data does not address these smaller blogs as many are merged with all the other blogs hosted by the same domain, as in the case of Six Apart’s TypePad. Others simply did not make the cut, as the list was limited to the Top 400 most-trafficked blog domains. All but one of the blog domains used in the report had more than 1,000 unique visitors.
Down the Food Chain
In Mr. Bruner’s opinion, the high price of advertising on top sites will lead companies to “start looking deeper down the food chain for more affordable advertising.” He estimated that about half of total page views on the Internet are to small sites.
Last week, Technorati announced that it had measured 14.2 million blogs, 55 percent of them active, about double the amount in March. The company counted 900,000 new posts per day in July, nearly double the amount in January (see Blogs: 900,000 Posts a Day).
Mr. Bruner said that the Technorati numbers give credence to comScore’s report. But, he said, “They’re not really comparable. Technorati can spider links, but they can’t actually look at traffic.”
An international report that combines blog creation with blog readerships of all sizes has yet to be completed.
The comScore report was sponsored by Six Apart and blog network Gawker Media.
Double what he said!
Thank you Jim Robinson for creating a superb place to gather and exchange ideas and wit in this ever witless world outside FR.
I would also like to thank MurryMom. Without your posts it would be difficult to gauge just how close to empty the left is running.
As good as this is, I still am annoyed that the MSM is too retarded to tell the difference between a forum and a blog.
No, but blog is evolving into a catch-all phrase for any sort of online interactivity unfortunately.
Kind of like BBS' are gone the way of the dinosaurs.
Way to go, Jim. It's amazing what you can do when you follow your principles and the things you feel strongly about! We are all indebred to you, Jim.
Congratulations to you Jim.
We aren't a blog technically, but I guess I could see the similarity with blogs that allow replies.
But still, we are a news discussion forum. Most posts are actual articles from news sources first. That is not what most blogs are......they may link to an article, but many are just commentaries.
Sold AMERICAN!!!
Now send me my shares!!!
We've come a long way since the early days, haven't we? Memories of the "awakening" of the Silent Majority still give me goosebumps! Then we picked up thousands more during the recount debacle. Who knows where we'll be in another couple of years!
WOOOO-HOOOO FOR SURE!
LOL
There is a free search, but it is obviously limited. Still, it gets the job done for me in most cases.
Ooooooh! What is "a dark and stromy night" ..??
I'm one of those.
That puts an entirely different perspective on things. People go back to Drudge (but his is news, not just chat.)
The last time you changed your name, I couldn't stop laughing all day.
It was such a clever twist.
I see a deep dip in DU's visits in mid may.
I wonder: anything to do with school cycles?
Makes my day, God Bless all the Freepers.
Dan Blather fake memos, lighted the path to FR, for me.
How do you find that out?
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