Meaning one of the 20 dozen blogs that get a lot of traffic. This according to Rick Bruner, Ad-Tech blogging panelist and creator of BusinessBlogConsulting. I’m writing from Ad-Tech, the big buzz digital marketing conference here at the New York Hilton. Rick offered this intriguing stat as a preview of a new study sponsored by ComScore, Gawker and Six Apart (makers of Movable Type and TypePad blogging software). So what does it mean? Well… Oh, and read the Ad-Tech blog.
a couple of things. 35 million Americans (in Q304) are reading blogs. That’s a lot of online folks. But they’re reading a tiny handful of blogs. So yes, blogging is still in its infancy as a publishing, marketing and/or business tool. Just a whiff of the future… But the few blogs getting attention are pretty darn influential.
More stats from the blogging panel: there are now an estimated 4.5 million blogs (according to Technorati). 99.9% of of them are personal blogs that get little or no traffic. Less than 500 or .01 percent are personal or one-person professional blogs that get some traffic and recognition. And fewer than 100 blogs (i.e. .002% of the blogosphere) get 1/2 million page views a month.
From blogging panelist Nick Denton, president of Gawker Media, “Of those who read Weblogs, about 1/3 write Weblogs.” This is not a “magical” phenomenon, Nick emphasized, “but it’s an influential audience.”
More later on “publishing” vs. business blogs. Interesting distinction…