Measuring the Blogosphere

Via InstaPundit and Jeff Jarvis, the Pew Internet Trust has tried to measure the reach of the blogosphere. I’m not sure how much credence to give Pew’s numbers, but they’re probably as good as any.
According to the Pew survey, around 120 million American adults “use the internet.” Of that number, 7%, or 8 million people, say they have set up blogs. That seems like a very high number to me.
In Pew’s survey, 27% of internet users said they read blogs, and 9% said they read political blogs. That would be nearly 11 million political blog readers, which seems high to me, based on what I know of our traffic and other sites’ traffic. Four percent said they read political blogs “regularly.” If I understand the numbers correctly, that means there are around 4.8 million self-described “regular” readers of political blogs–again, a higher number than I would expect, based on reported traffic.
On the other hand, 62% of internet users say they still aren’t clear on what a blog is. So the bottom line is, there is plenty of room left to grow.

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