Q. Who blogs? A. Mostly men
Technorati’s latest “state of the blogosphere” report is out and has some interesting findings. It’s a reasonably global bloggers survey with 48% of the survey results from the US. This is probably on the high side overall but much better than 100%.
Findings include:
- 67% of bloggers are male (which may help answer Jennie’s point)
- 28% are aged 50+ (this is the answer that most caught my eye)
- 14% have been blogging for a year or less; 13% for more than six years
- 35% of bloggers have previously worked in the media in some form (this is the answer that made me most wonder about how representative the survey is)
- Despite that only 38% say they have ever been quoted in the traditional media
UPDATE: As pointed out in the comments on Lib Dem Voice, I should have more than wondered how representative the Technorati sample is, at least as far as drawing lessons for the UK goes, because the ONS‘s figures are that more women than men blog in the UK.
Jennie started by pointing out evidence which suggests that more women than men actually blog (although men read blogs more than women). These two datasets combined seem to confirm the point she was making which was that women are less declaratory.
There isn’t any mention of methodology about the Technorati survey and a number of the results seem to suggest they are just showing us the raw data. The idea that 35% of bloggers are professional writers seems… unlikely. Just looking at the Lib Dem blogs I’d put that stat at less than 10%.
What it seems to be is the state of Technorati users, which by my estimate (as someone who no longer uses the site) are declining as a group all the time.
Does the Technorati study pick up closed conferencing/blogging systems like LJ? I only use LiveJournal for a couple of very specific things, but what I see of it suggests a strong female presence and sophisticated use of the friend and community settings, which might limit visibility to the wider blogosphere.
Good point. I don’t think it does for a look through the sites it lists. Didn’t find any LJ sites there – though by all means consider that a treasure hunt challenge!
I suspect that is “technorati users” not “bloggers”
I already stated in my post that technorati is a testosterone zone…
FWIW here is my somewhat-unserious response to this post: http://miss-s-b.dreamwidth.org/982758.html
Ahem 🙂
PS Are there some ONS figures on % of bloggers who are male/female that I’ve missed//forgotten by the way?
They were in the top paragraph of my post. Access to the internet is roughly equal; 6% of men blog, 8% of women blog. Therefore more women than men blog.
Thanks Jennie – that top para didn’t come up properly on my mobile device for some reason. I will send it away for remedial treatment. Will update post.
LOL thank you.
* hug *
“didn’t come up properly on my mobile device for some reason”
I like this new euphemism for the brain!
Oh dear. Poor Count Packula is going to get teased about his Mobile Device Malfunctioning every time he makes a typo now, isn’t he?
Ah, it would appear that we are talking at cross-purposes.
Incidentally Jennie, I can’t read your blog at all on MY mobile device, but I’m increasingly coming to the conclusion that my mobile device is crap.
It works fine on my little nokia.
James, works fine on my outdated Sony using Opera Mini as well, I’ve tested it on a few browsers and devices, I’d like at some point to do a mobile device CSS file but it’s a low priority–if it’s still a problem, putting &format=light at the end of the URL forces it into mobile display, might hack the layout code to provide a link to that directly like I did on my LJ.
Mark, I’ve never trusted Technorati stats, it’s almost entirely self seleccting as a service and is notorious for ignoring or marginalising certain services (LJ posts rarely if ever get indexed there properly, for example, whereas Google Blogsearch and Icerocket both find LJ and DW stuff fine).
The “38% quoted” is indicative–the whole point of blogging is the long tail, most bloggers are writing to a small audience of friends or similarly interested people, I’d be amazed if 5% of blogggers have been quoted (speaking as someone who has been, even if it was credited to Bob Piper).
Read through the whole report now–it’s clearly a response survey, so entirely self selected and therefore biased towards those that take blogging seriously, have registered with Techorati and responded to their survey. In other words, it has no credibility as anything other than a puff piece for Technorati but, unfortunately, it’ll be taked as gospel by journos and similar who don’t know better 🙁
The reason is that more and more boy born than girls???
Maybe.