State of the Blogosphere 2008: Who Are the Bloggers?

State of the Blogosphere 2008 by Technorati, Day 1:

Bloggers are not a homogenous group, but they are an educated and affluent one:

Two-thirds are male
50% are 18-34
More affluent and educated than the general population
70% have college degrees
40% have an annual household income of $75K+
25% have an annual household income of $100K+
44% are parents

They are experienced: 59% have been blogging for more than two years.


Four out of five bloggers are personal bloggers who blog about topics of personal interest. About half of bloggers are professional bloggers — blogging is not necessarily their full-time job, but they blog about their industry or profession in an unofficial capacity. 12% of bloggers blog in an official capacity for their company.

More data on the following days:

Day 2: The What And Why of Blogging
Day 3: The How of Blogging
Day 4: Blogging For Profit
Day 5: Brands Enter The Blogosphere

My Experience with Blogs

I have been keeping a blog (and more recently, blogs) since March 2005 and find it educational, useful and enjoyable. It has helped me stay in touch and exchange ideas with some of the smartest people in my field (much smarter than me, for sure). Although the recent phenomenon of micro-blogging services like Twitter is fascinating, one can say only so many things in "140 characters or less." The long-form blogging is here to stay -- at least I am not planning to go anywhere anytime soon.

Here are my 3 blogs and a Twitter micro-blog:

1. Clinical Cases and Images - Blog

The blog of ClinicalCases.org with medical, tech and other interesting stories has more than 2,000 daily subscribers via RSS.

British Medical Journal
Editorials, How Web 2.0 is changing medicine, Dean Giustini
BMJ 2006;333:1283-1284 (23 December)

"One of the best blogs in medicine is Ves Dimov's Clinical Cases and Images - Blog. It contains a rich collection of "presurfed" material for busy clinicians and features interactivity and timely discussion. Dimov is also a supporter of medical librarian bloggers. Why waste time fumbling with search engines when you can consult this blog for timely updates? As well as case discussions, Ves provides links to today's medical headlines from Reuters and clinical images via a dynamic, free photo sharing tool called Flickr. One of his slide presentations "Web 2.0 in medicine" is available on Slideshare (itself a fantastic new 2.0 tool). Clinical Cases and Images is a virtual laboratory for doctors and medical librarians interested in Web 2.0."

2. Allergy Notes

The blog features allergy, asthma & immunology news updated daily. Allergy Notes is the official blog of Allergy Cases.org, the most popular online case-based curriculum of allergy and immunology. Allergy Cases.org is endorsed by both the American Academy of Allergy Asthma and Immunology (AAAAI) and the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology (ACAAI).

3. Hit the Road - See America and the World is a travel website with photos and videos.

4. Twitter/AllergyNotes is my micro-blog. Don't forget to check the people I follow on Twitter.

References:
State of the Blogosphere / 2008 Day 1: Who Are the Bloggers? Technorati.
State Of The Blogosphere: Get To 100K Uniques, Make $75K/year. TechCrunch.