March 11, 2006

Bloganalysis

With no Bush around, no political uproars, no new releases and no
substantial turnarounds, it's been difficult for me to write. So
reading loads of blogs in search of content and topics (read as
'masala' in local terms !) has been a gud pass time in last few days.
And except for few definitely good posts I came across, most of them
stood as dead as mine, with no new posts of late. In one such post by
Youth Curry, a complete statistical analysis of the blog world is
beautifully presented.

I will quote some lines from it, and not provide the direct link (Yes,
I want to take credit and also fatten up this post, without thinking
hard ;D). Just kidding, with due acknowledgement to the original
author, here are some startling, some boring and some plain facts
about the blogdom along with some of my own researched ones.

- 98% of India is still unaware of what a blog is.

- In the blogosphere's superpower(who else but the US), most Internet
users - 62 per cent according to a survey by the Pew Internet and
American Life Project - aren't exactly sure what a blog is.
- The Google for blogger is www.technorati.com, a search engine that
tracks blogs.
- A scant 9 percent of net users read blogs frequently.
- Out of the thirteen activities on net Gallup measured in its poll,
reading blogs finished dead last.
- The number of blogs which are 'active in some way' is just 20% of
the 'total'.
- At the close of 2002, there were some 15,000 blogs compare it to the
'total' figure today which stands at somewhere around 28 million.
- More than 56 new blogs start every minute.
- Those updated in the last 30 days account for a mere 13%.

- Only two blogs get more than 1 million visitors a day and the
numbers drop quickly after that: the 10th ranked blog for traffic
gets around 120,000 visits; the 50th around 28,000; the 100th around
9,700; the 500th only 1,400 and the 1000th under 600.
- IBN is the first Indian media company to start 'official' blogs'.

Well, those were some pacifying facts for me, as the figures reflect a
not so intimidating plethora of bloggers and I can count myself as one
of those early birds, who's not in search of any prey. The blogger
community is as varied and diverse as the global citizenry itself. And
so are the posts - from politics to humour to sarcasm, to critcism to
a complete movement, its all there on blogs. Bloggers have realized
the inherent power and reach of this medium that they are overjoyed in
having such a means at their disposal. BlankNoiseProject
is one such social movement which appalls the profanity of eve-teasing in a very silent and organized way. With IIPM issue already handled in a surprisingly unified way
by this community more and more people are using blogs as a perfect
non-violent tool for expressing their outrage.

But its not only about contriving protests, expressing against or in
favor of different causes. There are people who've gained limelight
and popularity as bloggers, by the very style of their writing and
humorous yet sensitive content. With competitions in place for best
bloggers in various categories and readers voting with far more sense
of responsibility than they have for general elections, blogging has
kind of become a serious business. Those like me who don't consider it
any more significant than a bathing exercise cater only to a
nano-audience - which comprises of and is limited to one's friends and
family circles, or ocassionally of few more regular readers, adding up
to not more than 20 or something visitors daily.

Where as the big bullies of blogdom attract a torrential number of
regular readers to their posts. With almost a million daily hits on
the most popular one ( and that's close to the average of 1.7 million
visitors per weekday which the online edition of The New York Times
receives) blogging is catching up pretty fast with the other media in
place.

Certainly neither aiming at such a popularity chart or coming even
close to these types is the idea behind my blogging, but what
certainly intrigues me is how far and to what extent will this
powerful form of tech-media expression go in future.



--

2 comments:

Kaps said...

nice post again..
i wonder abt the power of 'blogs' and 'common knowledge' and 'sharing information and life' a lot..sometimes it keeps me going, coz may be i just want to be a part of it..something which has the power to shape the future..

Kaps said...

hbd
hbd
hbd
hbd