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.
Unnngh, Gramma!
>>Fr is a blog?
>>Good news, but is FR a blog?
We've been here longer than blogs...but hey, who cares what they call us, as long as they get the URL right... :)
This site gets more than Drudge?!!
Who is the man?
Jim is the man!
Who is the man?
John is the man!
Full speed ahead!
Damn the Democrats!
FR is where you find smart, well educated people who think for themselves.
I think CNN must have missed this. They stated earlier that Kos was the most read blog.
Jim..thank you for this place. Now if I can only buy a t-shirt but the link isn't working :(
Hooray. Thank you Mr. Robinson.
Muchos gracias, amigo.
Ain't that the truth. The MSM really doesn't understand the Internets, so they finally have a term they can hang onto and dimly understand, like "sidebar" in legal stuff and substituting "begs the question" when they mean "raises the question."
Forums are "Blogs" now? FARK is no more a blog then is FR, it just has alot more libs posting there.
"Congratulations Jim Robinson, Amy and John Robinson, as well as the moderators and all the posters who have made FreeRepublic.com the powerhouse that it is.
Woo hoo!"
3.6 Million ??
Holy Cow!!!
Free Republic Rocks!!
Did you happen to catch Wolf Blitzer on CNN today, asking those two "internet" reporters if there is a way to "count" the number of visitors to a web site? It was like watching one century trying to talk to the next century, because it was quite clear Wolf really didn't know.
Alright rack ittttt
I wonder where DU is on the list?
"FR is where you find smart, well educated people who think for themselves."
You obviously haven't been on the threads I've been on.
Jes kiddin' guys.
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