New Charts: Bloggers and Blog Readers on the Rise

In the early days of the medium, a blog was the only available outlet for people or companies that wanted to establish a feedback loop with their target audiences. Today, blogging is one of a variety of options businesses use to communicate with customers, including social networking, microblogging, photo- and video-sharing, and customer reviews.

At the same time, the growing use of blogging by media organizations and marketers has raised the comfort level with blogs as a news source, as a means of interacting with companies, and as a forum for customer reviews and opinions. These trends have empowered people to use the blogosphere to reach the widest possible audience.

The rates of blog reading will rise appreciably over the next several years. These increases will be driven by an ongoing confluence between blogs and traditional media, as well as by the growing use of blogs at the corporate level. Blogs are an increasingly accepted part of the news and opinion loop in a broad variety of subject areas, notably politics, technology and celebrity culture.

The numbers of blog creators will also increase, albeit more modestly. This growth will be spearheaded by the ease of use of blog hosting services and the widespread acceptance of blogs in the media mix.

Social media will also promote blogging by acting as a traffic aggregator to blog sites. However, this will be a double-edged sword, as social venues can also inhibit blogging by providing users with powerful platforms of self-expression.

What do you think about this data?