I made this one the other day....
Posted on 08/08/2005 4:13:34 PM PDT by kristinn
U.S. blog readership in the first quarter jumped 45 percent to 49.5 million people, or one-sixth of the total U.S. population, a report said Monday, suggesting the blogosphere is becoming increasingly alluring to online advertisers.
The increase means 30 percent of U.S. Internet users visited blog sites in the quarter, according to the comScore Media Metrix report.
In the quarter, Google’s Blogspot had 19 million unique visitors, which comScore noted was more than big mainstream media sites NYTimes.com, USAToday.com, and WashingtonPost.com. However, these visitors were spread around Blogspot’s millions of individual sites.
As far as advertisers are concerned, blog readers are a desirable demographic—young, wealthy, likely to shop online, and with high-speed Internet connections. They visit 77 percent more web pages than the average Internet user.
The most popular blogs were Free Republic with 3.6 million visitors, Drudge Report with 2.3 million, Fleshbot (a Gawker Media blog) with 1.2 million, followed by Gawker and Fark, both with 1.1 million. Regularly updated blogs won a huge portion of the overall visits. Drudge Report alone had 44.3 million visits.
Most popular were political blogs followed by “hipster” lifestyle blogs, tech blogs, and blogs written by women, comScore noted.
However, blog readership tails off rather quickly, with the majority of blogs having under 100 visitors a day, according to Rick Bruner, director of research for DoubleClick, who co-authored the comScore report.
The comScore data does not address these smaller blogs as many are merged with all the other blogs hosted by the same domain, as in the case of Six Apart’s TypePad. Others simply did not make the cut, as the list was limited to the Top 400 most-trafficked blog domains. All but one of the blog domains used in the report had more than 1,000 unique visitors.
Down the Food Chain
In Mr. Bruner’s opinion, the high price of advertising on top sites will lead companies to “start looking deeper down the food chain for more affordable advertising.” He estimated that about half of total page views on the Internet are to small sites.
Last week, Technorati announced that it had measured 14.2 million blogs, 55 percent of them active, about double the amount in March. The company counted 900,000 new posts per day in July, nearly double the amount in January (see Blogs: 900,000 Posts a Day).
Mr. Bruner said that the Technorati numbers give credence to comScore’s report. But, he said, “They’re not really comparable. Technorati can spider links, but they can’t actually look at traffic.”
An international report that combines blog creation with blog readerships of all sizes has yet to be completed.
The comScore report was sponsored by Six Apart and blog network Gawker Media.
No .. but neither is drudge
3.6 Million .. that is HUGH
Yay! Thanks to Jim Robinson!
Wow! Great research, I stand corrected. How does one get ahold of Lexis-Nexis? (cheap)
Looks great, doesn't it?
Thanks for the ping, BG.
It sure 'nuf does look great!!!
OXENinFLA >>> 501 threads and 23,677 replies.
Wow! Haven't checked that in a while.....
More than Drudge! Wow is right.
Whoa!
I made this one the other day....
I think all FReepers should take the pledge to avoid DU for one month and see just how low the numbers will go. LOL
We are a community.
I'm glad to hear this! I am addicted to this site! This is the ONLY place for news and opinion!
I hope people realize that when they write the stupid screed .. it's possible that it's being read by over 3 million people.
Thank you for being our east coast activist!
It's Jim Robinson's website. It's up to him to decide what to do with FR. He's doing an incredible job and we all love him for it.
But my proposal is why not sell some space on www.freerepublic.com to conservative advocates such as Weekly Standard, Fox News, National Journal, Wall Street Journal, Washington Times and etc. And Jim Robinson can use the money to help to pay for some of the site's cost or for a future FReep if the occasion warrants it.
It's just an idea. That's all there is to it.
"The most popular blogs were Free Republic with 3.6 million visitors..."
Thassit, I'm hidin' behind you Mo.
I'll just crouch down back here, you throw that tablecloth over me and voila, instant table, right?
Nobody will see me, and I'll be nice safe and ivisible..
/ bad joke.
Note to self... No Vanities! ;-)
Bears repeating:
FR is where you find smart, well educated people who think for themselves.
FR is where you find smart, well educated people who think for themselves.
FR is where you find smart, well educated people who think for themselves.
Except for the trolls from DU that have to get zotted from time to time. LOL
Kristinn are we a Blog?
I always call us an online political and news forum.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.