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, Googles 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 Blogspots millions of individual sites.
As far as advertisers are concerned, blog readers are a desirable demographicyoung, 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 Aparts 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. Bruners 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 comScores report. But, he said, Theyre not really comparable. Technorati can spider links, but they cant 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.
bumpity uppity
This is absolutely the main reason I hang around FR. There are so many bright minds here, that combined, FR has an IQ that is in the stratosphere. I get smarter simply by osmosis. My IQ is estimated in the Al Gore range (135), but I never fail to learn something new here on FR each day. Its great!
And to think that the Left tries to portray us as low IQ morons.. sheesh, they have no idea... actually, many of them probably do, and thats why they FEAR sites like this one!
I evolved into clicking on the "FreeRepublic-Favorite" in my sidebar rather than use the refresh button.
IOW, I probably count as 100 hits during the course of the day.
Plus...FreeRepublic is my homepage too.
I would add that what an IQ test tests is someone's ability to take IQ tests; it doesn't correlate reliably with intelligence, judgment, cleverness, creativity, imagination, wisdom, or the ability to manifest happiness.
Yes, Leftists tend to be elitists. They would love to believe that the vast mass of humanity out there is populated by their inferiors, both intellectual and moral. It's not.
Wonder how Elian's doing?
Getting a better education than had he been in Florida public "skools", I bet.
And isn't it bad manners to hi-jack a thread? ;^)
With more intelligence, credibility, fairness, and balance than the Slimes, too.
Congratulations all around, and cheers to you, Kristinn. I've always felt honored to take part in Free Republic. It is fun, it is informative, and it has practically no calories :-)
Many "found their way" to FR via Drudge and vice versa.
Between two, people who care started a revolution in the use of modern technology and the gathering of information sources.
Bump for all who dare to seek the truth!
Also a not inconsiderable number of people who care about what's good and clean and decent and honest and fair and right...
Eet's noot a blog!!
Yes.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.