eMarketer today provides its usual good briefing skills to Perseus’s survey of blogs, which estimated that there are 4.12 million blogs worldwide.
In that survey, the conclusion that got the most publicy was 66% of the surveyed blogs had not been updated during at least the past two months. Statistically, that represents 2.72 billion blogs. Some 1.09 million of those blogs were what Perseus called “one-day wonders” &$151; blogs that were setup by users but never used. Another 1.63 million blogs were abandoned after only 120 days. These high abandonment rates belie claims by blogging aficianados that three or four million blogs were in daily use.
However, the other data that surprised us were the average age of bloggers. Perseus found that 91 percent of bloggers were ages 13 to 29. Teenagers accounted for 51.5% of all bloggers. What is remarkable is that those age percentages don’t follow the age demographics among the initial users of the Internet. During 1993 through 1996, the majority of Internet users were between the ages of 25 and 35 but with a sizeable plurality above the age of 50. That might have been because personal computers were expensive back then and weren’t used by young people?
The almost lack of bloggers above age 39 is striking! Less than two percent, according to Perseus. This begs two question: Are blogs mostly used as journals by teenagers and young people? Why aren’t older people, who do keep analog journals (particularly by retired people), also using blogs?
A third question might be, Have young people discovered something online that older people haven’t yet? But we don’t think that is the case.