Average blogger | Abandoned blogs | Blog international | Blog surfers
The average blogger
Just who is blogging?
The average blogger is a teenage girl who posts every two weeks to update her friends on her life. That suprising average blogger was the result of Perseus Development Corp.'s random survey of 3,634 blogs on eight popular blog-hosting services. 10
If that is not surprising enough, consider these statistics from the Perseus survey:
- people under 30 created 92.4 percent of the blogs
- women created 56 percent of the blogs
- active blogs are updated on average every two weeks
The results of the survey reveal blogging has potential to become a communication revolution among young people.
The abandoned blogs
Although 4.12 million blogs have ben created on the eight popular blog-hosting services: Blog-City, BlogSpot, Diaryland, LiveJournal, Pitas, TypePad, Weblogger and Xanga, 1.09 million blogs were abandoned upon creation. Another 1.63 million blogs were abandoned after an average 126 days.
One of the most obvious questions is why are so many blogs abandoned? Customer experimention and starting over (giving up and creating a new one) could be two popular reasons for the high turnover rate.
Also, the eight popular blog-hosting companies lure bloggers with free hosting and other specialities that may cause bloggers to switch hosting services frequently.
Experienced bloggers may decide to self-host their blogs or leave for smaller hosting companies. 15
Blog international
Although blogging is international, an overwhelming majority are published in English. 5 That could mean Americans, Britons, Canadians and Australians dominate the blogosphere.
However, it could be more likely that English is the choice language for online activity. The English language is the top choice among those who learn a second language.
Blog surfers
Blog surfers only spend about 96 seconds on a blog each visit. Blogs with comments scored higher on average. This may be disheartening to the blogger who spends hours agonizing over a post.
The key to keeping blog surfers may be more interaction - most blogs
are text only. Graphics, photos, video, audio, polls and comment services
may coax a reader into staying longer. 11
As more people enter the blogosphere, the demographics will change. But, there is no doubt, a blogging community exists.