Serendipity35

Now that December is here, there will be a glut of 2009-in-review lists in magazines and newspapers and on TV, radio and the Net. Best of, worst of, trends and other categories will be rampant. I may do a post of my own if I can come up with at least a semi-original take on things, but for now the first one that caught my eye was Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere 2009 report.

Technorati has been doing the annual study since 2004 following the growth and trends in the blogosphere.

This year they focused on professional bloggers who dominate the field these days. That's definitely a trend in itself for 2009 - business has moved big time into social media. Professional blogging activities, brands in the blogosphere, monetization, Twitter & micro-blogging and bloggers’ impact on US and world events are all topics for their report.

One specific result they found is that bloggers use Twitter much more than does the general population. In a poll conducted by Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates in May 2009 for The Wall Street Journal’s “All Things D” conference, just 14% of the general population used Twitter – but 73% of respondents in this survey do (including 83% of Corporates and 88% of Self-Employed).

Those who use Twitter say they do so outwardly to promote their blogs and bring interesting links to light, and inwardly to understand what people are buzzing about. Other uses of Twitter, like interacting with companies (24%), politicians (11%),and celebrities (9%), are much less popular.

http://technorati.com/blogging/feature/state-of-the-blogosphere-2009/