BusinessWeek Takes Closer Look at 'Active' Blogosphere

Blogspotting's Heather Green has an interesting post today digging into the recent 'State of the Blogosphere' update from Technorati. Specifically, she contacted Dave Sifry to get to the bottom of one of the most questioned stats; exactly how many of the 70+ million blogs that Technorati tracks, are still active?

Green writes that Sifry claims that number is only 15.5 million, or 21% of the total number of blogs that Technorati tracks. Sifry calls a blog 'active' if it has been updated in the last 90 days. Sounds pretty INactive to me, but that's his call.

Green adds;

Excited to try out a new way of connecting with folks online, people flocked to blogging. But after 3 months on average, most bloggers realize that writing about their politics, launch haunts, or co-workers isn’t for them, says Adam Sarner, an analyst at researcher Gartner Inc. Sarner argues that, since the audience reading blogs continues to grow, this classic tech cycle of hype and maturity is good news for the remaining blogs. Those left standing are the influencers that attract audiences and advertisers.

And I also think that many of these blogs that are going dark, are from companies/individuals that started blogging as a way to generate income, and quickly dumping the endeavor when they realized that it was actually going to take a real commitment to get results from a blog. For example, in late 2006, I remember Technorati was showing 1,600 blogs labelled as 'marketing' blogs in its directory. A few weeks ago I rechecked that figure, and it was over 23,000. It's probably more than that now.

Besides, blogging has a steep learning curve. I've been blogging for about 20 months now, and I still learn something new about the medium almost every day. But the flipside is, there's now more good information available to newcomers on how to start and maintain a blog, both for the individual, and the company. That will make the process much easier for everyone that follows.

Interesting reporting by Green, but I see this as the inevitable shakeout that had to be coming to the blogosphere. Those that aren't committed to the space will go away, and leave less clutter for the rest of us to wade through. That makes the better blogs that continue to grow and thrive, that much easier to find, and more influential. I see that as a good thing.


UPDATE: CNET and TechMeme pick up on the story.


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The Viral Garden, Marketing