Technorati lays bare the state of the blogosphere: most are still hobbyists

October 19, 2009 | Dean Takahashi | Comments | |

techno-1Technorati is beginning its slow striptease again. Today marks the beginning of the five-day rollout of its annual State of the Blogosphere report. The company started previewing the report on Friday at the Blogworld Expo in Las Vegas.

Richard Jalichandra, chief executive of Technorati — a search engine for blogs and a host for them as well — said in his presentation on Friday that blogging continues to gain steam as a profession, particularly as traditional media journalists migrate from old media to the web.

Today’s release is about who bloggers are. Even as some bloggers become more professional, 72 percent of bloggers call themselves hobbyists. About 9 percent of bloggers are self-employed, and of that group, about 22 percent say their business is their blog. Some 10 percent of the professional bloggers say they blog more than 40 hours a week. And among professional bloggers, 40 percent say they worked in traditional media.

This year’s survey interviewed 2,900 bloggers and was conducted by research firm Penn, Schoen & Berland. The survey found that two-thirds of bloggers are male and 60 percent are 18 – 44 years old. And they’re addicted to Twitter. Some 73 percent of bloggers use Twitter, mainly to promote their blog posts. In the general population, only about 14 percent of people use Twitter. Here’s a selection of data from the survey, which will be rolling out on the Technorati site from today through Friday.

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About the Author, Dean Takahashi

Dean is lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He covers video games, security, chips and a variety of other subjects. Dean previously worked at the San Jose Mercury News, the Wall Street Journal, the Red Herring, the Los Angeles Times, the Orange County Register and the Dallas Times Herald. He is the author of two books, Opening the Xbox and the Xbox 360 Uncloaked. Follow him on Twitter at @deantak, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.

  • I agree, it does seem that hobby bloggers do make up the majority of the sites online today. However, more and more businesses are getting involved, too. Which means, things will hopefully balance out soon.
  • "less than 1% of the us labor force was employed as a journalist in 2006" wow, it seems like the only way to succeed anymore is through self-publishing and self-promoting!