Blogging - A Form Of Media, Analysis Says

With the rapidly increasing popularity of both reading and creating blogs online, surveys have undertaken to study the phenomenon and demographics in clumps these days in efforts to get a firm grasp on what may have to be considered a new form of media. Analysis in an extensive form comes most recently in a report entitled, “Behaviors of the Blogosphere: Understanding the Scale, Composition and Activities of Weblog Audiences.” “Behaviors of the Blogosphere” was put together using old-fashioned techniques of media analysis and new strategies designed to cope with the traffic rules of the “information superhighway.”

The research was done by comScore Networks, a firm devoted to global information providing and consulting. The comScore mission statement promises that by using comScore services, superior marketing, trading strategies and sales results will manifest. Thus in studying a new online media, analysis by comScore was (and is) much sought after.

The report begins with a neat history of the “blogging” concept. Etymologically speaking, the word dates back to 1989, and its coinage its credited to Peter Merholz. Blogger.com was the first website to provide blogging software, and the race to fill cyberspace with words was on. Most recently noteworthy (at least in the eyes of the researchers) was the influence imagined to be exerted by bloggers during the 2004 United States’ presidential election. In that election, argues the study (and many others), bloggers took on the role of what amount to a form of media. Analysis by comScore’s research panel included measurement of the online activity of some two million participants visiting forty hosts and similar groups.

Later to be reported in the media, analysis showed some interesting figures. In the first three months of 2005, three-tenths of all internet users in the United States (and thus approximately one-sixth the population of the United States!) visited blogs. Political blogs were found the most popular, and blog visitors were seen to have visited twice as many websites as blog avoiders. Blog visitors also participate in more online surveys, and shop online far more frequently.

In blue outline runs the paper’s subtitle announcing that top blog websites are comparable to those of the media. Analysis went on to show that websites like blogspot.com outdrew print media juggernauts such as the Washington Post, the New York Times and USA Today. Blogspot.com was the top blogging ‘site, followed by livejournal.com and typepad.com.

Last, but certainly not least, comes the utterly unshocking news that bloggers and those who love them make for a great consumer demographic. Whoa. This writer thought that was the very point of the analysis in the first place. Hey, maybe I should write a blog. Yeah, yeah…it’ll be a day-by-day account of the great conspiracy of corporations to manage a whole community of people through something called a “blog.” Is anarchyontheinternet dot com taken?

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