Blogging is it dead or not!!

Image by Laughing Squid via Flickr

Recent article in New York Times (NYT) painted a grime picture of blogging by citing the decline in number of bloggers; this has annoyed the online community greatly. As soon as the NYT article hit the e space, numerous hardcore bloggers went into action posting their views on how absurd NYT was being with its story. Charges from ‘cherry picking statistics’ to ‘lack of understanding of blogosphere’ were levied against NYT.

Here are the dampeners from the NYT article:

• Blogger, owned by Google, had fewer unique visitors in the United States in December than it had a year earlier — a 2 percent decline, to 58.6 million
• From 2006-2009 blogging amongst 12-17 yr old fell by half
• Amongst 18-33 yr old it dropped by 2% in 2010 as compared to 2008

And here’s the cheer from the same article!!

• Among 34-to-45-year-old's who use the Internet, the percentage who blog increased six points, to 16 percent, in 2010 from two years earlier
• Blogging by 46-to-55-year-old's increased five percentage points, to 11 percent
• Blogging among 65-to-73-year-old's rose two percentage points, to 8 percent
• Globally, Blogger’s (owned by Google) unique visitors rose 9 percent, to 323 million.

While the hardcore bloggers say these figures paint a false picture, the truth is far from clear. Blogging sites do acknowledge that they have seen some decline in the traffic. But at the same time they are happy to acknowledge that the number of serious bloggers is increasing. While the younger audience is moving towards ‘Facebook and Twitter’ the older and more serious talkers are joining the blogosphere.

Facts that we are able to gleam from all the discussion going in the E- world about this topic are:

• Blogging is decreasing amongst the younger generation below 25 yrs are looking towards 'facebook' and 'twitter' to keep in touch with friends and share their opinion
• At same time more and more audience above 30 yrs is joining the blogosphere to post their views and thinking
• Blogs are becoming meatier and serious as lighter writers are shifting towards Twitter and other applications
• Blogging sites are coming of age and becoming more suave by creating communities to bring like minded people together and offering more applications and features
• New trend is emerging where in people are using other application like ‘facebook’ and ‘twitter’ to promote their blogs

As a last word, every statistician agrees that more and more people are joining the online world to share their views and opinions on myriad topics with the world. Thus the bottom line is that whether its 'blog' or 'facebook' or 'twitter' or any other application the final goal of the people is to share their thoughts with the world and, this is a very useful tool for any e-marketer.

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