Technorati Blogosphere Report -- 1.3 million new posts per day, so what are people writing about?
The CEO of technorati, David Sifry, posted an interesting report on the state of the blogosphere. Technorati is the organization that most carefully tracks blogs. There are at least 57 million blogs that Technorati is tracking. The number doubles about every 236 days. More than half of the blogs are active.
Technorati ranks blogs by how many people link to them (similar to how Google ranks pages too). They looked at why some blogs are ranked higher than others. Much of it has to do with posting volume. The top tier bloggers post about twice a day, whereas the lower tier post maybe post once every two days (12 times per month). With all those people writing, the total is about 1.3 million posts a day.
That's a lot of information. Jeffrey Veen says now that writing and publishing is a snap for anyone, the question becomes what to write about.
Now, all that effort the tool companies put into making blogging software usable has made the power of publishing available to anyone and everyone - there are millions and millions of blogs online having a tremendous influence on how we consume and produce media. This has had an interesting if unanticipated affect: now that it's so easy to write online, what should I write about?
I try to post to my blog each day. I'm not entirely sure why; I just thought it would be a good practice and habit. I've found that daily posting has a nourishing effect on my mind. I'm always looking for something new to write about. It keeps me mentally awake about technical writing, and I simply find it enjoyable to make a quick entry. Additionally, the collaborative, interactive effects of blogging is really fun.
A year ago, I asked Neil Perlin why he didn't start a blog. His thoughts may have changed by now, but one reason he gave was that he felt he'd run out of things to say after a month. I've often thought about that, and wondered how someone who is on the forefront of technology, where new sites, tools, methods, trends, and technologies are emerging each day, can run out of things to say? I often find that I don't have enough time to write about everything I want to write about! Once you get in the groove with a topic, just staying current with the other bloggers gives you more ideas than you can handle.
About Tom Johnson
I'm an API technical writer based in the Seattle area. On this blog, I write about topics related to technical writing and communication — such as software documentation, API documentation, AI, information architecture, content strategy, writing processes, plain language, tech comm careers, and more. Check out my API documentation course if you're looking for more info about documenting APIs. Or see my posts on AI and AI course section for more on the latest in AI and tech comm.
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