Gallup to Blogs: RIP Y'all
Thursday, February 23, 2006
The Chicago Tribune reports that, according to pollster Gallup, blogging is over:"Gallup finds only 9 percent of Internet users saying they frequently read blogs, with 11 percent reading them occasionally. Thirteen percent of Internet users rarely bother, and 66 percent never read blogs. Those numbers, essentially unchanged from a year earlier, put blog-reading dead last among Gallup's measures of 13 common Internet activities. "
So what do you all think? Has blogging peaked? Do Americans really want to read my silly ruminations-- or yours?
On the other hand, the good people of Gallup, New Mexico have a blog of their own...
Posted by: --josh-- @ 12:19 PM
I tend to think that the Gallup findings are missing the point. The blog phenomenon isn't about who reads them. its about who CREATES them. Sure, blogs won't ever be as popular as sites like eBay or Yahoo! or even CNN.com (I hate to compare blogging to porn, since blogs are such a great source of free porn). But how many of us are launching our own TV network, as compared to how many of us are keeping blogs. Even with digital cable, there isn't a platform for anyone who wants to create a TV channel, regardless of finances, regardless of tech expertise, to go do so.
The profundity of blogging is in the democratization of content creation-- Consumer Generated Media, or (new buzz phrase) "CGM."
I know one clever 11-year-old boy who has THREE blogs. Sure, probably the only one reading them is Stinky from fifth period Gym class, but these kids will grow up in a world where they create and share the content they want. There may well not be a "MSM" (mainstream media) when they're my age.
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