<![CDATA[State of the What?]]>Technorati has posted the latest State of the Blogosphere - except that now it is the "State of the Live Web."
He notes that, in a change from the old State of the Blogosphere reports:
With this report, we expand on this tradition by introducing information and analysis relating to the broader range of social media on the Web -- what we and many others call the Live Web (another good definition). Technorati continues to grow well beyond its roots at the leading blog search engine; increasingly, we are the main aggregation point for all forms of social media on the Web, including blogs, of course, but also video, photos, audio such as podcasts and much more.
It's odd to me that the links for "Live Web" actually point to Linux Journal - I'd always though of "Live" as a kind of Microsoftism - to go with Windows Live Search, Live Spaces, Office Live, etc.
(According to Doc Searls, the "World Live Web" meme goes back to 2001 and was coined by Allen Searls - I know Doc has been using this distinction between Live web and Static web for some time.)
Anyway, some conclusions:
- 70 million blogs tracked, 120 thousand new ones each day
- Doubling now takes 320 days, not 180 (continued lengthening from last report)
- In Q4 2006, there were 22 blogs in the top 100 most popular sites, up from 12 in Q3 - there is an increasing overlap / mixture of "mainstream media" and "blog" audiences
Interesting that Sifry doesn't take on any of the reports that blogging will reach it's peak in 2007 - or is already in the process of dying out. (See this BBC article about Gartner's predictions, or see Bruce Sterling's SXSW rant that Blogging will be dead within 10 years).
While I don't see blogging dying anytime soon, I can imagine it might change forms.
Will Twitter surpass blogging? I hope not. What about tumblelogs, on platforms like Tumblr?
Perhaps I'm too old (at 37 I'm on the late edge of the curve for many Digital-era technologies) but I prefer the longer form blog to these microblogs, even if they are updated in near real-time.
It'd be interesting to plot average length of blog post over time - are we (collectively) writing more but shorter posts?
Is there no future in the long form essay on the weblog?
(Technorati has also set up a homepage for these reports, enabling users to review all of them in reverse chronological order, and clarifying the creative commons license under which the reports are published).]]>