Jonathan Carson wonders "Is BLOG going to be an industry term?" His concern is based on a Nielsen//Netratings study on blog readership. A question was asked to measure readership: Do you...
a) Read blogs every day
b) Read blogs occassionally
c) Know what a blog is but dont really read them
d) Have heard of a blog but don't really know what it is
e) Never heard of a blog til right now
The result might let blog researchers down: only 6% of the general population claim a) and b). As Carson said, the numbers "totally don't line up with the Pew research on blog readership that is typically quoted." In Pew study, "9% of internet users now say they have created blogs and 25% of internet users say they read blogs."
The discrepancy is expected--did you notice the different population in the two studies? Nielsen investigated the general population that is hard to define [the population of the U.S.?] while Pew used American adult Internet users as denominator instead. It is estimated that nearly half of Americans are online, so I might arbitrarily "dilute" Pew's blog readership by dividing 25% by 2 so we've got an [very unlikly] accurate estimation on the size of blog readers: 12.5%.
Still not close enough to 6%? Nielsen's following survey might offer a way out. The research group then examined server logs and located a group of people who had visited a blog. The same question was asked and 13% answered e). Half of the people answered c) or d).
It is a fairly common theory amongst folks analyzing the blogosphere that blog readership is underreported in surveys - but Charlie's team found a way to quantify that with staggering results.
So only one third of blog readers realize they are reading a blog. If we apply this finding to the previous number 6%, we would be happy to triple 6% to get 18% [very likely to be inaccurate too]! Hooray!!!
But why people can't tell a blog? Hmmm...actually blog is a vague definition that is not distinctive enough to be differentiated by average Internet users. People think they are browsering a web site or a home page. Actually in some sense, a blog is indeed a web site and a home page. It's like you ask a person "are you watching a Made-for-TV film?" [Yes, s/he is!] S/he might say: "No, I'm just watching TV."
Hey Juanmao, I decided to move my old blog to my msn space, which I like better. Here it is: http://spaces.msn.com/members/rockyonly/
Hi, Dan Li! Something you don't know: it is after I visited here last summer that I started blogging. I can't remember how I got here though. Your blog is really delicately designed and rich in contents, and one that I model after.
Can we make friends?I'm a senior majoring in Computer Science in Hunan University now. And if you don't mind, what are you majoring in?
We made a reservation at the new P.F.Chang in Thousand Oaks for my birthday on August 22nd for 5 guests. The night before I double checked the reservation. When we arrived they had a table for 4 and told us to wait. It was so noisy and the host was so rude, we left the restaurant never to return. I think you should know about this because we were very disappointed and so were our guests.
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