Based on a survey of 20,000 people, a recent study concluded that only 8% of Americans read blogs. The vast majority are bloggers themselves.
Well, I guess that’s it. We should all pack up and go home. MRI Research and CBS chief research officer David Poltrack has once and for all proven that the blogosphere is utterly irrelevant to the future of anything.
Except that it isn’t. So what if only 8% of people read blogs on any kind of a regular basis? The important thing is that search engines read blogs. What’s more, search engines like blogs. They update a lot and they are remarkably free of stupid, confusing code. Dynamic sites have a huge leg up in the world of search and everyone knows it.
If your customers are looking for products that you make, or services that you provide, you want to be the first thing to show up in the search results. And if you want search engines to consider your site to be the most relevant result to your industry, blogging is the best way to accomplish it.
This whole Web 2.0 thing is a too complicated to be contained in a simple statistic like: “only 8% of people read blogs.” Yes, the blogosphere may be slightly over-hyped right now. But it’s a lot less hype and a lot more substance than this study would indicate.
Many thanks to DL Byron for IMing me the link to this study and its inane conclusions.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
steven e. streight aka vaspers the grate 01.29.07 at 9:42 am
And only 1% or less of web users ever post user generated content, like blog posts and comments, if I recall the latest stats.
But ask Dan Rather what he thinks of the power of blogs. Or Kryptonite, or any of the other blog marketing and buzzfests mentioned in this blog.
What percentage of Americans fought in the Revolutionary War?
What percentage of humans start wars between nations?
Statistics can be misleading when not put into context and historical setting. I wonder who was the first user group for the postal mail, telephone, radio, television, email?
Damon Billian 01.29.07 at 2:47 pm
I personally didn’t view it as an attack piece on blogging per se. I would have liked to know what the questions were in the study (for business or personal reading, etc.).
I would think that the blogging numbers would’ve gone up if the blogs on social networks were included.
Kevin Hillstrom 01.29.07 at 8:53 pm
You and your efforts, and those of other bloggers who write well, will be proven worthy of attention over time.
Ten years ago, pundits clobbered e-commerce, saying only tech-savvy men were buying merchandise online. We don’t hear that sentence uttered anymore.
In time, the same thing will happen with folks reading blogs.
Dawud Miracle 01.30.07 at 12:06 pm
Interesting point, Steven. I’d love more details on the pollers. What percentage were over 50, for instance? Not to say people over 50 don’t blog. I would just say that the percentage of bloggers over 50 would be far lower than those between 25-40.
And how many people recognize a blog versus a website. My site doesn’t, necessarily, look like a blog and could easily be mistaken as not one.
As Steven points out, there’s so many holes in this study, it seems. Now it’s going to get published as though it truth.
Heck, even Poltrack’s own comment about how he feels that most people reading blog are bloggers will be reported as fact on our evening news in a few nights. So watch for it.