A few weeks ago Technorati came out with their annual State of the Blogosphere 2008 figures. They revealed that 133 million blogs have been setup since January 2002. That means, on average, over 72,000 blogs have been setup every day since the blogging phenomena started.
Staggering numbers!
However these top level numbers hide the full picture. Scratch the surface and you’ll find the blogosphere is changing....fast.
Out of those 133 million blogs only 1.1% or 1.5 million of them had been updated in the last 7 days.
16 million or 12% had been updated in the last 120 days
In 2007 there were 1.5 million blog posts a day. By the end of 2008 this number had fallen to 900,000
These figures suggest that blogging is slowing down. This is a natural, inevitable and healthy process as the sector matures. The web is clogged up with neglected and poor quality websites. It is in everyone’s interest that they are weeded out and closed down.
This de-cluttering of the blogosphere will continue for sometime and websites with good quality content will benefit as a result.
The maturing and evolution of the sector is leading to fragmentation as bloggers focus on the kind of content they want to create, the type of audience they want to build and their personal (or company) goals.
There is a perception that all blogs follow the same format and operate in the same way; namely they are journal style posts in strict chronological order, commenting on news, events, products, personalities and other organistations.
This can be shown in a graph:
This is now an outdated view.
Today blogging is much more fragmented, sophisticated and can be broken down both by content type and blog objectives.
There are four types of blog when segmented by objectives
Hobby Blogs – if a blog is not making money or marketing other products, services or events, it is a hobby blog
Campaign Blogs – some blogs are created to build awareness of an issue, situation or cause. These range from charities to terrorist groups
Marketing Blogs – many blogs are used to promote products, services, events, celebrities or businesses. Their goal is to build visibility and credibility, ultimately leading to a commercial outcome
Profit-Driven Blogs – more and more bloggers are looking at ways of monetising their content and audience through advertising, paid reviews, affiliate marketing, subscription, sale of products (courses, research, ebooks, etc), events, etc. They see their blog as a profit centre
It is also possible to segment blogs by the type of content they create ranging from Twitter comments (microblogging) which come and go in seconds to ebooks and courses which have value and relevance for many years.
As you can see from the above chart, blogging is fragmenting. Indeed many blogs have evolved so much they no longer fall within the definition of blogging.
Successful online publishers are finding a format that suits them and building their site accordingly.
To illustrate this segmentation here are examples of each of these type of websites:
Many bloggers who struggled to keep their blogs up to date have migrated to the social networking sites where they share their thoughts, hobbies and plans. More of a blogging substitute than blogging.
Huffington Post – the most read ‘blog’ in the world is an online newspaper – www.huffingtonpost.com
Gawker – more newspaper than blog with a team of journalists covering media, marketing politics, etc – www.gawker.com
Online Magazine
Smashing Magazine – one of the fastest growing ‘blogs’. Covers web design – www.smashingmagazine.com
Problogger – making money from blogging. Now more like a magazine than blog – www.problogger.com
eBooks/Courses/Webservices
SEOBook – Aaaron Wall sold over $1m worth of his ebook SEOBook. Now he has turned the book and blog into an online membership website and SEO course – www.seobook.com
SEOMoz – Blog turned membership site for SEO marketers – www.seomoz.com
As more content moves online so this fragmentation will continue and we will see lots of hybrid publishing business models emerge. Many will be driven by the increasing desire and need for publishers to make money from the time and effort that they put into their sites.
There is a general trend towards creating content that has a longer shelf life so that more pages can be monetised for a longer period of time. Online publishers will also focus on introducing multiple revenue streams rather than being dependent on advertising and sponsorship.
Here’s a summary of how the blogging world will continue to evolve:
The leading blogs will become more dominant
There will be room for three blogs in each niche. Those not making the grade will wither on the vine or shift focus (Ed: see gadget blogs)
Big niche’s will continur get divided up into sub-niches
Many successful blogs will move to more of an online newspaper or magazine format
The best blogs will compete with established print newspaper and magazine titles
Most content will remain free, but monetising blogs will be a dominant theme as more content moves online, recession sets in and audiences grow
The growth in the number of new blogs in the developed world will rapidly slow. Growth will continue in developing markets
Blog networks will continue to emerge to improve publisher’s bargaining power with advertisers. They will be built either through acquisition or partnership
The use of multimedia and interactive tools will accelerate making content creation more challenging
Traditional publishers will start to finally get their act together. Some will go on to own their space online. Others will go out of business because they do too little too late
Musicians and bands will be one of the fastest growing segments as they disintermediate the big record companies
Conclusion
Blogging is maturing which means the number of active blogs is likely to fall, but the number of successful blogs is likely to rapidly rise.
The original blog format has moved on along way and will continue to evolve to meet many different needs including marketing support, promotion of causes, personal diaries and off course the creation of online publishing businesses.
All content that can be digitised will be digitised and distributed over the net. Some will find its way onto blogs, whilst most will require more sophisticated content publishing solutions which include password protection, community building features and the ability to create multiple revenue streams.
These are exciting times and despite the fact that over 133 million blogs and millions of other content websites have been launched over the last five years, it’s a sector that is still in its infancy.
Anyone, anywhere in the world still has the opportunity to become a successful online publisher. All you need to do is be driven by the passion and determination to create one of the top three sites in their chosen niche.
TalkContent is a site for those that are passionate about creating content. Whether you're a blogger, a website owner or a large online magazine publisher, this is the site for you.
