Thanks to always on broadband connections, blogs are booming. Of course you would not find that in the conclusions of the Pew/Internet research report that is currently making the rounds.
* 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.
* 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.
Now compare this with Broadband growth in the US. According to FCC, High-speed lines connecting homes and businesses to the Internet increased by 15% during the first half of 2004, from 28.2 million to 32.5 million lines. Do the math!
I was reading on Google’s Developer Blogs (Blogger.com, as well) that blog’s have increased 58% sinnce the beginning of 2004. That’s an enormous increase, perhaps they are going to be the next biggest thing on the net?