Technorati Analyzing The Blogosphere

Technorati is running a comprehensive set of articles focused on the blogosphere, and the growth over recent years. An unbelievable interesting study from both a blogger and reader perspective. Citizen journalism is really maturing into a fully fledged media channel, and has to be on the radar of anyone in or around the communications business.

Welcome to Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere 2008 report, which will be released in five consecutive daily segments. Since 2004, our annual study has unearthed and analyzed the trends and themes of blogging, but for the 2008 study, we resolved to go beyond the numbers of the Technorati Index to deliver even deeper insights into the blogging mind. For the first time, we surveyed bloggers directly about the role of blogging in their lives, the tools, time, and resources used to produce their blogs, and how blogging has impacted them personally, professionally, and financially. Our bloggers were generous with their thoughts and insights. Thanks to all of the bloggers who took the time to respond to our survey.

Blogs are Pervasive and Part of Our Daily Lives
There have been a number of studies aimed at understanding the size of the Blogosphere, yielding widely disparate estimates of both the number of blogs and blog readership. All studies agree, however, that blogs are a global phenomenon that has hit the mainstream.

The numbers vary but agree that blogs are here to stay:
· comScore MediaMetrix (August 2008)
o Blogs: 77.7 million unique visitors in the US
o Facebook: 41.0 million MySpace 75.1 million
o Total internet audience 188.9 million
· eMarketer (May 2008)
o 94.1 million US blog readers in 2007 (50% of Internet users)
o 22.6 million US bloggers in 2007 (12%)
· Universal McCann (March 2008)
o 184 million WW have started a blog 26.4 US
o 346 million WW read blogs 60.3 US
o 77% of active Internet users read blogs

Read the rest of the article, and find links to the other pieces here.

A Response to 'Innovation vs. "New Economy"'

I received some interesting feedback to the last post titled, "Innovation vs. "New Economy."  One comment provided an interesting historical perspective on the staggering economy, and situations we've faced before.

Thanks to guest poster "Chuck" for allowing me to use his comment as a post:

We seem in the US to go from point A to point Z, find ourselves in economic trouble, and then wonder how we got there. what happened to points F or J.....at Z already? Well, it takes time and more than a few individuals from a few different administrations. 

We have economic crashes every few years always precipitated by an economic 'event' dreamed up by some Wall Street brainiacs. And they can dream up these schemes because Wall Street lobbyists have managed to tear down yet another system safeguard by sending some Congressman's daughter to Harvard or some such perk.

The last vestiges of the regulatory patches to the famous market crash of 1929 were eliminated in the past 15 years....that's a few adminstrations. The Community Redevelopment Agency was mandated in the late 1990's to help lower income folk get homes. The sub-prime Wall Street geniuses of the early 2000's finished that job....and all of us.

The REAL devil in all of this latest upset remains the hoaried Standard & Poor's rating service. As old as Wall Street itself, S&P was supposed to be the last defender of the good and true. Absolutely everything that has happened in the mortgage mess could have happened without it being a world-wide phenomenom. Mortgages could have gone under, mortgage companies could have failed, people that invested in those investments could have lost a bit. And it would have been localized as this business and investment area had always been.

What spread the infection world-wide was good old S&P being convinced, for $15 million a pop, was that this garbage was worthy of a AA rating, almost up there with good old US Treasury paper. So for every billion dollar mortgage-bond package rated, they got $15 million and their rating allowed the packages to be sold world-wide.

And that's why the Italians and French and everyone else are suffering from lousy mortgages in Arizona and Texas....

And that's why 

Innovation vs. “New Economy”

The economy sucks! Our financial system is crumbling due to faulty government intervention and uncontrolled spending. Recession is looming.

That was the last you will hear of me rant about the “down” economy, because negativity is only going to get us so far. From this moment forward, it is now the “New Economy” in my mind. I’m completely over what has happened in the past, and am looking forward to a new White House, and a new economic system to tackle the mess we are in now.

So how will this “New Economy” affect the world of start- ups? I am a firm believer that innovation will ALWAYS win out. That isn’t necessarily a prescription for guiding the next 6 months of change, but creativity and smart business people will always find a way to shake up a stale business period.

It’s no secret that green ventures and biotech will continue to grow. From both a social and economic perspective, these are business channels that are both in need and have potential for development. Outside of those categories, a new business will need to show solid plans for revenue generation, which may seem tough over the next 6 months. However I do truly believe that originality can prevail. And I believe there is always space for an idea that is either brand new, or is a modified version of something everyone takes for granted.

The online ad space will be a very interesting place for investors. The double edge sword of marketing is that ad budgets are the first to be cut in an economic downturn. However, it also means that offline dollars get shifted online where rates are cheaper and accountability is more prevalent. Web start-ups should theoretically be flourishing in this “New Economy” because you will be hard pressed to find a middle tier advertiser looking to spend $2 MM in television for 5 thirty second spots. That same budget can be taken online and be diversified over the course of a few months. And it can go towards emerging media channels, like mobile, online video, social media, etc. Places where consumers are turning for their most prized content.

All in all, I’m legitimately excited to see where the next 6 months take us. in terms of venture capital dollars, the economy as a whole, and for emerging media, there will be lots of changes and I’m interested to see it all play out.

CBS Creates iPhone App...And Supplies Porn

Who said CBS had lost it's cutting edge?

In a classic case of citizen journalism gone awry, CBS’s iPhone application Eyemobile has created a big stir today in the application market. Eyemobile provides users an easy link to CBS’ user generated news platform CBSEyemobile.com where citizens can upload photos and short pieces as their version of “news.” Straight from the AdAge presses:

Karl Johnson, chief operating officer of BrandContent, a Boston-based agency, uploaded the app last night and saw a picture of a young woman bent over her kitchen stove, her skirt hiked up. Later he saw video of three women performing sexual acts on one another. A visit to CBSeyemobile.com turns up a few photos that walk the line of not-safe-for-work, a jarring juxtaposition with CBS's storied news brand. What's more, Google is advertising on the clips via AdMob.

As a huge supporter of the application movement and the Mac community, I will be jumping on the bandwagon of calling out CBS’s moderating system as faulty. The same way Facebook and other massive user initiated sites are monitored, there is a built in system to track content uploads and safety of said content.

CBS does have a moderator, but it seems the system isn't working, or perhaps not as well as they would like. "We've been posting user-generated content since April, and this is the first known incident along these lines," a CBS spokesman said. "It was removed promptly and we will redouble our efforts in this regard."

While CBS’ debacle will probably only leave a temporary stain on the growing app market (enter T-Mobile and G1 stage left), we should all remember the potential pitfalls of putting the word “news” in front of the UGC acronym.

Sidenote, could you ever turn on the TV for your 6 o’clock news and accidentally get porn? No, which is why everyone loves the Internet; it keeps you on your toes.

XBOX.com -- WOW!

I just stumbled upon the new XBOX Great Britain website, and wow. I'm a Mac loyalist, as any Digicrest reader knows, but Microsoft or whoever is responsible has done an UNREAL job with the new XBOX environment. Pure class!

Why this is only the look for Great Britain, I have no idea. But who cares, it's awesome.

Adobe To Bring Flash To iPhone

Apple Insider reports that Adobe has said they are close to releasing a version of their Flash player for the iPhone.

Sr. Director of Engineering at Adobe Systems Paul Betlem made mention that the program is nearly finished, however Apple's closely guarded App Store system would have the final say. Should Apple approve the software, it would be available "in a very short time," Betlem added.

Betlam was speaking at the Flash On The Beach (FOTB) conference.

As an iPhone user, I’m sure I’m not alone in saying there needs to be a video capability of some kind for the iPhone beyond the YouTube application, which in my opinion is subpar.  Now that the G1 is on its way, despite its wholly unimpressive build and features, there is now competition for the basics that the iPhone provides.  The first in the video race will truly set themselves apart as a viable media channel.  Until then, the market will continue to stutter in the face of technological roadblocks and a growing content base.