The Blogosphere

The summer has taken this blogger in many directions—most away from the keyboard. As several of you know, wife Bonnie and I spent 10 days in South America recently, including a week cruise around the Galapagos Islands.

The islands: Incredible. It’s an education in evolution, geology, biology and several other “ologies.” Creationists/intelligent designers have to ignore all of the Galapagos experience, indeed virtually all of science, to dismiss evolution. Interestingly the changes in the Galapagos Islands continue. There is a new island forming underwater 35 miles to the west of the youngest island, Fernandina.

Most of the media excitement we found was focused on the World Cup where Ecuador reached the round of 16. We left Quito, the capital, for Galapagos the morning of Ecuador’s game with England, a match the flight crew was eagerly following. Many of us tourists were wearing the Ecuador team’s bright yellow jerseys, which we had bought from the ubiquitous vendors on the Quito streets.

We knew the score was 0-0 at the half. When there was no report an hour later, I inquired about the game’s progress. A dejected flight attendant’s face told the rest of the story. Watching the World Cup in a foreign country, even if you don’t understand the language, gives you a better sense of why soccer is truly the international sport.

Blogging in the News

In recent weeks, blogging has been very much in the online news. Sort of bloggers blogging about . . . you get the picture.

June’s BloggerCon IV drew a who’s who of blogging. One of the most complete accounts of BloggerCon is posted by ZDNet’s Dan Farber. Separate items discuss videoblogging, blogging ethics (civility v. shock value) and politics and blogging.

Pew Survey of Bloggers

A news story of particular interest is the Pew Internet and American Life Project’s report on the blogosphere.

Among the findings:

--About 12 million American adults keep a blog or 8% of internet users.

--Slightly more than half of the bloggers (54%) say they have never published their writing or media creations anywhere else. Obviously a lot of new voices are entering the public arena.

--The most common reasons cited for posting a blog were “to express yourself creatively” (52%) and “ to document your personal experiences or share them with others” (50%).

--More than half of bloggers (54%) are under 30. They are split between males and females with more than half living in the suburbs. And 40% are not white, considerably more than for all Internet users.

--And 55% say they blog under a pseudonym (unlike this blog), which may account for some of the outrageous postings.

Blog Users

Another survey, this one by comScore Media Metrix and reported by eMarketer.com, indicates that blog traffic increased by 56% over the last year and 34% of the total Internet audience now visit blogs.

The numbers are impressive, but what I found interesting is the breakdown of users by age and income. As expected persons aged 12-17 are most often visitors, 21% more likely than average to visit blogs. But persons 45-54 are only 3% less likely than average to visit. Clearly this is one more area in which the Internet is becoming more of a mainstream activity.

And households with incomes of $75,000 and higher are most likely to check out blogs, surprising given the ages on the most frequent users.