This is a good update on the 'state of the blogosphere.' It's too long to play in class when we get to social media, so I hope you'll take the 9 minutes and view it.
Blogging Trends for 2012: What You Need to Know from Michael A. Stelzner on Vimeo.
I agree with Technorati's assessment of blogging still has lot of value. Its interesting to see how Technorati developed a business around associating brands with blogs. I also see more and more within the corporations/intranet blogging mainly to share information within the company and also gain visibility within the corporation.
ReplyDeleteThe point about disclosure caught my attention - and the 14% who choose not to disclose. How will Technorati's efforts to connect businesses/brands with bloggers change the face of blog content? Will paid bloggers' opinions be attenuated? How will readers react to disclosure and the content of posts?
ReplyDeleteSorry to take the discussion on the video in another direction but...
ReplyDeleteBefore listening to this I had no idea of the raw data available on blogging so I was really surprised to see Shanni Higgins reveal 65% of bloggers were male. I later did some research to find out why this is the case (I tried some journals and later http://technorati.com/), which is a great resource) but couldn’t find any real hard data (if anyone has would love to see it).
I am still forming an opinion on this and would like to hear from others and see some data. My view is that females may blog as much if not more in different topic areas such as brands, business and personal musings. The type of blogs may differ in terms of content and tone. It may be the case that males have a more confrontational style around issues in politics that lead to heated and at times personal debates that can descend into personal attacks back and forth (leading to more blogs). Do males get more personal satisfaction from venting in this type of debate, do males prefer to communicate more in written form?
I wondered what the gender break down of what the blogging topic might be. I did find the top three areas blogged are 1. Personal musings 2. The news 3. Politics but I couldn’t find data on male/female blogging trends.
The reason I feel this data could be important is blogs may need to be tailored more depending on the target audience. Customizing the blogging platform, setting the tone, being considerate of communication style and aesthetics to effectively target a male audience may be very different to a female audience. If the target markets are both male and female then tracking bloggers and content maybe very important not to alienate any consumer group
On a separate point some interesting facts from the State of the Blogosphere 2011 Report:
• According to bloggers, the Japanese earthquake and tsunami generated the greatest amount of buzz in the blogosphere this past year. 38% of respondents said they read about the earthquake and tsunami on blogs and 10% blogged about it themselves.
• Over 60% of bloggers mainly blog for fun for the personal satisfaction they get from speaking their minds.
• One third of bloggers have worked for the traditional media in some capacity.
• The majority of every blogger type reported being married, and in most categories, close to half were parents:
Read more: http://technorati.com/social-media/article/state-of-the-blogosphere-2011-part1/#ixzz1mFOGyGgC