Blogs and Feeds

Sizing the Blogosphere

One question that I am frequently asked is: "How many people actually blog?" This is a tough question to answer. There are so many different variables that must be considered. These include:

• How many bloggers are there in the US or in the world?
• How many active bloggers are there?
• How many blogs have been abandoned after just a few posts and are hence over inflating the stats?
• What data is reliable for measuring the size of the blogosphere?

In my quest for better information, I have found a number of sources. Blogcount.com has gathered together some impressive numbers. But, as I have tracked this space over the past eighteen months, the one thing that has impressed me is that every stat is out of date -- too small -- the minute it is written. New bloggers continue to come online minute by minute.

For example, in early January, Bill Gates recently claimed that since lauch over 1 million Spaces have been created. Since MicroSoft launched Spaces, the english version at least, in December this growth is phenomenal. Gates also noted that there is a significant decay rate, since many start a blog only to abandon it almost immediately. Like many other bloggers, I started a Space too, gave it a test-drive, and have not vigorously blogged to it. I'll be back though.

The Gates numbers cited above present a minor challenge. They may include some blogs from the Japanese and Korean launches that preceded the english-speaking launch. Does this matter? You're not kidding it matters! According to the Korea Hearald data interpreted by Phil Wolf of blogcount.com there are approximately 11.9 million bloggers in Korea.

For my opinion, the speed of the rush to blogs by the big search engines -- Ask buying Bloglines and Yahoo! launching blogging service in Japan, suggests the blogosphere is a mere adolescent about to put on another fast growth spurt.

Search Engine Strategies - Wrap-Up

Search Engine Strategies, New York, 2005 is now history. The results are in -- it was the biggest SES yet. They just seem to get bigger and bigger. According to Jupiter Media CEO Alan Mecklar "Total attendance was about 6000 (50% greater than 2004). Paid attendance was 1734 (52% greater than 2004). Exhibiting companies liked what they saw as 70% of them booked space for the 2006 show."

We are hardly surprised. Search continues to grow. Some of us were sitting around musing about the good old days. I guess that may have been the intent of the Jerry Yang from Yahoo! keynote. This is Yahoo! tenth year and a birthday cake was highly appropriate. Yahoo! for me marked the start of my own career in search. I remember my excitement when I realized that I could/should submit to this new (way back then) directory. I remember telling my clients, then in pr, that they really needed a site since Yahoo! and other engines like it would become THE way to be found. How nice to know that this has all come to pass.

The best part of the show is not just the trips down memory lane but the excitement of new things. The launch/meeting of the Web Analytics Association (WAA) held Wednesday early evening in the lobby bar highlights the growing interest in this essential area of Web marketing management. As I cruised through the show's Expo, the analytics tools were of a special focus. Now, hopefully with WAA there will be even more interest in making these better understood and used.

I must admit that I enjoy the social side of the show as much as anyone. There were the parties, always lots of fun, but for me they were far eclipsed by the pleasure of meeting and talking with colleagues and friends whether over a meal or in passing. I would not want to list all of them here lest I leave someone off , but it was wonderful.

The mark of a successful show in my opinion is when there just isn't quite enough time to get to all of the sessions that one wants to attend or enough time to meet with one more person or . . . You know what I mean -- when you just want to do it all over again so that you can catch up on what you missed.

That being said, SES San Jose is just a few short months away, and there is always SES Toronto. In short, SES is a not-to-be-missed event. How Danny Sullivan and his team continues to make this event such a must do is a tribute to their creativeness and the tremendous thought and energy that the team puts into making each event a rousing success.   

Search Engine Strategies - Day1

Search Engine Strategies started today with packed sessions on several topics of personal interest. I did not arrive until the afternoon sessions were in full swing. Went to Searcher Behavior. Gord Hotchkiss of Enquiro presented a new study on what parts of the search results page gain the most attention. I eagerly await an opportunity to read the study. I was too far back in a very crowded room to see the slides, but the presentation whetted my appetite. The eye goes to the upper left where there is essentially a hot zone.

The second session that I attended was Blogs, Boards, and Posts: Capturing Consumer Buzz Online. This session was interesting although a bit more commercial than most sessions at this event that distinguishes itself with top-flight content delivered without the usual commercials. Parts of the session were quite interesting.

Did you realize that you are reading "consumer generated content," a somewhat disturbing notion. I always assumed that advertising and journalistic media were in fact the product of humans, who are consumers. I guess I must be mistaken. Maybe this strange verbal anomaly has to do mean -- speaks with an authentic voice. Still may not have a grip on it.

All gags aside, the session was interesting. I'm still convinced that most public relations and marketers need to take deliveries from the Cluetrain now more than ever. The session had several firms represented who provide monitoring of attitudes -- an absolutely essential function. The question still hangs in the air of how to use the information effectively.

Another anomaly that the presentation data showed is that there is noise on a topic in the blogosphere then following at a discrete distance is "news" picking up the beat. Hmmm! Perhaps, we should not call it "news" but "olds" since it is typically recycled, formerly new information. Maybe we will see journalism schools providing training on vetting and recycling content rather than reporting. I'm just being very cynical, but . . . who knows. I come away with a few answers, but more questions. That has been how it always has been.

Blog Tools Market Update

Just read Elise Bauer's Weblog Tools Market - Update. As she notes:

Market share analysis is an educated guessing game, especially when you are trying to determine share with only publicly available data.

But, in the fast-changing blog space, this market analysis is much needed. It should be noted that this analysis is US-centric so it is not totally representative of the entire blogosphere.

As this data shows as ever more tools come on the market it can be anticipated that the early to market leaders will gain momentum against the rest of the pack of followers. This will be particularly the case for those early market leaders with deep market reach such as Google has with Blogger.

I'm very much looking forward to tracking this over the next couple of years. In my opinion the good news with all of the growth is that at some point we will focus our discussions on blogs away from the technology to the actual uses. Yes! There will always be room for the tech-talk, but the emphasis will shift to applications. Blogs offer so much potential for expanding the "conversation" whether personal in a diary, enterprise-wide for project collaboration or market-wide through public blogs such as this.

The one clear picture that has emerged during the writing of Business Blogs: A Practical Guide has been how diverse the uses are already. It is clear that we are still just scratching the surface of their potential. I can hardly wait.

AIM Enters the Blogsphere

The Association for Interactive Marketing (AIM), the interactive marketing subsidiary of the Direct Marketing Association has launched a blog for its councils. The AIM blogs will be fed by the council members. I have been a member of the Search Engine Marketing Council (SEMC) and its co-chair for the past two years and have participated in its efforts to promote ethical practices in search marketing by developing and disseminating best practice documents and offering educational materials and Webinars. All of these efforts can only help grow the stature of search marketing and the understanding of its place in the marketing mix and the effectiveness of this marketing tactic. It will be interesting to see how the AIM blog develops over time.