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January 02, 2005

Google stars

: 60 Minutes just gushed over Google and John Battelle got lots of face time.

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Gone

: On NBC News tonight, an ITN reporter went to a town that was gone, simply gone: only the mosque left standing, not a single soul left. He couldn't find out the name of the town and said it didn't matter now anway.

: Later... Ann Curry is in south Asia reporting on the tragedy for Dateline. I might have dreaded that; as nice as Curry is, she can drive me nutty with her theatrical concern. But she's doing a very good job here. The tragedy is so apparent that there is no need to amplify it for TV.

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Blog explosion

: The latest Pew Internet and American Life study has astounding findings on the growth of blogs:

: 7% of the 120 million U.S. adults who use the internet say they have created a blog or web-based diary. That represents more than 8 million people.

: 27% of internet users say they read blogs, a 58% jump from the 17% who told us they were blog readers in February. This means that by the end of 2004 32 million Americans were blog readers. Much of the attention to blogs focused on those that covered the recent political campaign and the media. And at least some of the overall growth in blog readership is attributable to political blogs. Some 9% of internet users said they read political blogs “frequently” or “sometimes” during the campaign.

: 5% of internet users say they use RSS aggregators or XML readers to get the news and other information delivered from blogs and content-rich Web sites as it is posted online. This is a first-time measurement from our surveys and is an indicator that this application is gaining an impressive foothold.

: The interactive features of many blogs are also catching on: 12% of internet users have posted comments or other material on blogs.

: At the same time, for all the excitement about blogs and the media coverage of them, blogs have not yet become recognized by a majority of internet users. Only 38% of all internet users know what a blog is. The rest are not sure what the term “blog” means.

Hell, at this stage in the birth of the web, I'll bet just as many people didn't know what the hell HTML was. The fact that almost 40 percent of online Americans know what blogs are is amazing.

Note that Pew says 8 million people have created blogs. Technorati tracks 5.4 million of them (many international, by the way). There are still hidden blogs on LiveJournal and other mainstream services.

The growth is still at the beginning stages, which is to say it's explosive:

The Pew Internet & American Life Project began asking about blog creation in the spring of 2002. In June of that year, 3% of internet users said they had created a blog or web diary that others could read. By the beginning of 2004, the figure had grown to 5% of internet users. Our survey in late November showed that the number grew to 7%, which represents more than 8 million people.

Some demographics. Blog creators are likely to be:

: Men: 57% are male
: Young: 48% are under age 30
: Broadband users: 70% have broadband at home
: Internet veterans: 82% have been online for six years or more
: Relatively well off financially: 42% live in households earning over $50,000
: Well educated: 39% have college or graduate degrees

None of this surprising: It's a profile of early adopters. That was the profile of internet users a few years ago but today, internet users are better reflecting the country. This is the profile of internet creators; this, too, will go more mainstream. But the effort required to create will always separate those who instead read. And the reading numbers are growing even faster as the audience for blogs explodes:

We began asking about this in the spring of 2003 and found that about 11% of internet users at that time had read blogs. The figure jumped to 17% this past February and leapt to 27% in November. The growth in 2004 alone amounts to 58%. Blog readers are somewhat more of a mainstream group than bloggers themselves. Like bloggers, blog readers are more likely to be young, male, well educated, internet veterans. Still, since our survey February, there has been greater-than-average growth in blog readership among women, minorities, those between the ages of 30 and 49, and those with home dialup connections.

See: It's going mainstream.

And let's remember that there is a middleground in content creation between blogging and reading: It's commenting:

More than one-in-ten internet users (12%) say they have posted material or comments on others’ blogs. That represents more than 14 million people and is a threefold increase from April 2003 when we first asked a question about those who contribute to others’ blogs. Many of those posters themselves have blogs and a quarter of young adult internet users (those 18-29) have posted to other blogs.

Pew also finds, not surprisingly, that Kerry supporters were more likely than Bush supporters to read political blogs. Well, I'm not surprised.

And here's the first measurement of RSS:

Our first query on the use of RSS aggregators and XML readers shows that 5% of online Americans have RSS aggregators or XML readers that feed them content. They are classic early adopters: veteran internet users, well-educated, and relatively heavy online news consumers.

In the Wall Street Journal story on this study, the head of the Pew study said that the tsunami story will expand blog awareness and readership yet more:

Blogs that cover the tsunami disaster and relief efforts are bound to boost readership further, said Lee Rainie, the project's director.

"The tsunami is one of those cataclysmic news moments where lots of people's perceptions change," Mr. Rainie said. "Awareness of blogs will grow dramatically. There's so much attention to the coverage on blogs and Web sites and first-person video as primary news sources."

At the end of my day at MSNBC, one of the anchors asked what permanent impact this story will have on weblogs.

I said this shows that weblogs are serious, not just toys. Weblogs are about human lives. Weblogs can be profound.

: UPDATE: Getaloada this ringing endorsement of blogs in the comments from Kathleen A:

I only found out about blogs in April of 2004 - and never looked back. It has changed the way I gather and use information. It has changed the way I use the internet and it has given me access to communicate with people outside of my world - which I never could have done before. Blogs have changed the world and opened understanding among people's across the globe. The MSM can't compete. The people have the power to cross every boundary and culture. And with the people is where the power belongs.

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Tsunami challenge

: Blogger Anders Jacobsen says if you put the list below on your blog, he'll donate $1 for every blogger to tsunami relief:

International aid organizations:
UNICEF (United Nations Children's Fund)
United Nations' World Food Programme
Medecins Sans Frontieres / Doctors without Borders (donate!)
CARE International
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies

UK/Europe:
Disasters Emergency Comittee (DEC) - comprises a raft of aid agencies, including the below and others
British Red Cross
Save the Children UK

North America:
American Red Cross
Canadian Red Cross
Save The Children

Anders Jacobsen: Webloggers: Give to tsunami victims and I'll give too!

: MORE: We Jarvises gave to Doctors without Borders and MercyCorps.

Note that Amazon's Red Cross campaign is about to hit $12.5 million.

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Read Rosen

: I have been sinfully remiss in not pushing you to read Jay Rosen's year-end round-up of the top 10 ideas about media in 2004. I was waiting for Jay to finish writing up all 10 but that's taking longer than I thought it would -- Rome was not abstracted in a day -- and so I'll make up for lost time and send you there now. One of my big trends for 2004 was learning from Rosen. He embodies that amazing academic talent for taking a complex world and abstracting it into clear concepts that can be investigated and studied and debated. His list for the year is classic Rosen, clear, heavy with meaning, and spot-on:

1. The Legacy Media.
2. He said, she said, we said.
3. What the printing press did to the Catholic Church the blogging press does to the media church.
4. Open Source Journalism, or: "My readers know more than I do."
5. News turns from a lecture to a conversation.
6. "Content will be more important than its container."
7. 'What once was good--or good enough--no longer is."
8. "The victory of affinity over geography."
9. The Pajamahadeen.
10. The Reality-Based Community.

He explores the first four here, the fifth here, and the sixth here.

To me, the abstraction of the abstraction of all this comes down to one word: power. It's all about a shift of power from those who've had it to those who initially owned it and licensed it: the citizenry. And this is not happening just in media, of course. It is happening in marketing and advertising and commerce and culture and politics and may even come to government. But because the tools at work mimic media -- though they are more than media tools -- media is, for once, on the front edge of the trend. But it's a trend that will come to the rest of society. There's a quiet revolution underway. The people are taking back their power again.

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Speed

: It's impressive than in only a week, the SEA-EAT tsunami information blog has risen to No. 3 in a search for "tsunami" on Google. In no time, an authority is created by the authority of links.

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