State of the Blogosphere

Technorati's State of the Blogosphere is out. The report is so extensive that they are breaking it into five parts over five days: who are the bloggers, the what and why of blogging, the how of blogging, blogging for a profit and brands entering the blogosphere, something I have seen more and more of in the past twelve months.

Over half are at least on their second blog. I wonder how many of these 2nd, 3rd and 4th blogs are because the first one failed, they used the first one as a guinea pig testbed or blogged anonymously until they 'found their voice.' Other reasons could be trying one blog platform that didn't really work for them and not wanting to take the time to do a transport if they didn't have much content up there in the first place, so simply started from scratch.

I also find a lot of bloggers have started with one topic they think they want to write about and end up writing about something completely different two years into it. In other words, they find their passionate voice through trial and error. Technorati reminds us that not all blogs are treated equally.

On the who? Bloggers are not a homogenous group, but they are an educated and affluent one: three out of four U.S. bloggers are college graduates, and 42% have attended graduate school. They skew male, and more than half have a household income over $75,000.

A few more summary points:

* Two-thirds are male
* 50% are 18-34
* More affluent and educated than the general population
o 70% have college degrees
o Four in ten have an annual household income of $75K+
o One in four have an annual household income of $100K+
* 44% are parents

They segment blogs out into personal (personal interests), professional (your industry & profession but not in an official capacity for a company), and corporate (blog for your company). The latter is growing but the majority still fall into the professional category for those blogging about business related topics.

Four out of five are personal bloggers and only 12% of bloggers blog in an official capacity for their company.

Here's a look at blogging globally.