watertank | BBC: Blog reading explodes in America

Americans are becoming avid blog readers, with 32 million getting hooked in 2004, according to new research.

The survey, conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, showed that blog readership has shot up by 58% in the last year.

Some of this growth is attributable to political blogs written and read during the US presidential campaign.

Despite the explosive growth, more than 60% of online Americans have still never heard of blogs, the survey found.

Blogs, or web logs, are online spaces in which people can publish their thoughts, opinions or spread news events in their own words.

Companies such as Google and Microsoft provide users with the tools to publish their own blogs.

Getting involved

The rise of blogs has spawned a new desire for immediate news and information, with six million Americans now using RSS aggregators.

BLOGGING IN AMERICA
Blog readership has shot up by 58% in 2004
Eight million have created a blog
27% of online Americans have read a blog
5% use RSS aggregators to get news and other information
12% of online Americans have posted comments on blogs
Only 38% of online Americans have heard about blogs
RSS aggregators are downloaded to PCs and are programmed to subscribe to feeds from blogs, news sites and other websites.

The aggregators automatically compile the latest information published online from the blogs or news sites.

Reading blogs remains far more popular than writing them, the survey found.

Only 7% of the 120 million US adults who use the internet had created a blog or web-based diary.

Getting involved is becoming more popular though, with 12% saying they had posted material or comments on other people's blogs. Just under one in 10 of the US's internet users read political blogs such as the Daily Kos or Instapundit during the US presidential campaign.

Kerry voters were slightly more likely to read them than Bush voters.

Blog creators were likely to be young, well-educated, net-savvy males with good incomes and college educations, the survey found.

This was also true of the average blog reader, although the survey found there was a greater than average growth in blog readership among women and those in minorities.

The survey was conducted during November and involved telephone surveys of 1,324 internet users.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/technology/4145191.stm

Published: 2005/01/04 10:54:47 GMT

© BBC MMV

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Commentary: This is a very significant development from a system evolution point of view, because it clearly shows that the human race got its collective memory increased by a factor of at least 100. And this is just one of the first mass applications of the Internet age.
There's a number of intersting problems associated with rapid memory exapnsion, accessibility and the lack of structure being the more important ones. Both of them cannot be fixed by the traditional web search tools, because the information flow rate in the blogging (news feed) space exceeds capabilities of the existing indexing technologies. Meta-data creation has to become real-time in order to adequately represent the underlying raw data stream.
The semantics of the meta-data is not clear yet. For example, the LiveJournal's Memories mechanism lacks even rudimentary content management tools. The same goes for www.blogger.com and other services. The blogger though allows for e-mail logging, which in combination with, e.g. gmail profiling, can bring some structure to the ever-increasing accumulation of information. But it only works for one's personal account. Potentially, the unused "LJ interests" mechanism could be applied in combination with the Memories. For example, when I add something to the Memories the system could ask me which interest it fits into. If it doesn't then my interest system is not adequately expressed. Updating it would allow for a development of a DNA-like mechanism in the meme-space. I would even argue that that it is the equivalent of informational DNA. It's creation and update has to become automatic in order to scale with the flow.

But what about the information created by other people that I am not aware of? It is quite possible that due to its volume the blog-space has most of the answers to my questions. The only problem - I don't know I have those questions. Search engines cannot bring me answers to the question: Show me something very important I don't know. I believe to solve this problem on the data level is almost impossible due to the sheer volume of data. Therefore meta-data level creation/distribution/processing/exchange has to emerge. www.newsisfree.com is an early attempt at such system, but it's very weak right now.
Expect Google, and maybe Yahoo to enter this area some time this year.

Exciting times!