Blogging making waves in the US

A recent report by Pew Internet and American Life Project talks about Blogging in US:
http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_blogging_data.pdf

Few key points from the report are:

- Blog readership shoots up 58% in 2004
- 6 million Americans get news and information fed to them through RSS aggregators. But 62% of online Americans do not know what a blog is !
- 7% of the 120 million U.S. adults who use the internet say they have created a blog or web-based diary. That represents more than 8 million people. - 27% of internet users say they read blogs, a 58% jump from the 17% who told us they were blog readers in February. This means that by the end of 2004 32 million Americans were blog readers. Much of the attention to blogs focused on those that covered the recent political campaign and the media. And at least some of the overall growth in blog readership is attributable to political blogs. Some 9% of internet users said they read political blogs "frequently" or "sometimes" during the campaign.
- 5% of internet users say they use RSS aggregators or XML readers to get the news and other information delivered from blogs and content-rich Web sites as it is posted online. This is a first-time measurement from our surveys and is an indicator that this application is gaining an impressive foothold.
- The interactive features of many blogs are also catching on: 12% of internet users have posted comments or other material on blogs.
- At the same time, for all the excitement about blogs and the media coverage of them, blogs have not yet become recognized by a majority of internet users. Only 38% of all internet users know what a blog is. The rest are not sure what the term "blog" means.


I also found blogger demographics interesting...

Blog creators are more likely to be:
• Men: 57% are male
• Young: 48% are under age 30
• Broadband users: 70% have broadband at home
• Internet veterans: 82% have been online for six years or more
• Relatively well off financially: 42% live in households earning over $50,000
• Well educated: 39% have college or graduate degrees


Blog posters

More than one-in-ten internet users (12%) say they have posted material or comments on others’ blogs. That represents more than 14 million people and is a threefold increase from April 2003 when we first asked a question about those who contribute to others’ blogs. Many of those posters themselves have blogs and a quarter of young adult internet users (those 18-29) have posted to other blogs.

Readership of political blogs
Just under one-in-ten internet users (9%) said they regularly or sometimes read political blogs during the campaign such as the Daily Kos or TalkingPoints Memo or Instapundit: 4% said they did so regularly and 5% said they did so sometimes.