Sifry’s State of the Blogosphere

8th August 2006

posted in blogs, globalvoices |

David Sifry, founder and CEO of Technorati, has published another “State of the Blogosphere,” updated for August 2006, and as you might guess the results are eye-opening. According to Sifry and Technorati, the blogosphere is 100 times bigger than it was just 3 years ago. This is exponential growth, folks. Amazing.

So just how fast is the blogosphere growing? Let’s ask how fast is the blogosphere doubling? According to Sifry:

Today, the blogosphere is doubling in size every 200 days, or about once every 6 and a half months.

Another way to gauge the growth speed of the blogosphere is to do the math and figure out how many blogs are created each day and each second of each day, on average. Again according to Sifry:

As of July 2006, about 175,000 new weblogs were created each day, which means that on average, there are more than 2 blogs created each second of each day.

And the US Congress wants to pass DOPA, in a futile attempt to stop students across the US from engaging in digital social networking? Give me a break. Are these guys and gals in Congress reading many blogs, or even Wired magazine?! Probably not.

One of the most beautiful things about blogging is that it is an international, multi-lingual phenomenon and dialog. The following graph from Sifry’s latest report is both colorful and compelling for these reasons:

As most people know who have been blogging for even a little while, blog spam is a big problem. Thankfully, Technorati is dealing with the issue. According to Sifry:

About 70% of the pings Technorati receives are from known spam sources, but we drop them before we have to send out a spider to go and index the splog.

On a related issue, Sifry offers five tips for bloggers to crack the Technorati top 100 in the August issue of Wired, in his article “Make Your Blog Popular.” The tips are:

React quickly.
Make your posts easy to read.
Link, link, link!
Optimize for search engines.
Post, post, post!

Are we teaching our students to write for the blogosphere? Hyperlinked writing IS the most powerful form of communication on the planet, you know. Maybe the language arts curriculum at your school should include at least a short unit on blogging? I’d suggest it be a theme that lasts all year long.

On this day..

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 8th, 2006 at 12:13 am and is filed under blogs, globalvoices. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

1 On August 8th, 2006, Diane said:

The one thing that comes to mind in looking at these statistics is that blogs are certainly filling some sort of need “out there”. I had a great conversation with some teachers in a workshop today about the use of blogs. Immediately, they see the connection to the curriculum, to the ability to link students with each other, to write in ways that we hadn’t previously had. So when I see that the number of blogs is growing at such a rapid rate I think about our inherent need to connect with others only now it’s globally, not just the students within the four walls of a classroom. As I reflect on my experiences with blogs which have only begun this summer, I think about the role models that are being provided to us by you, David Warlick, Will Richardson and a host of others and I think about what blogging has done for my own writing. Blogging is definitely a writing genre that needs to be addressed in a 21st century classroom. It should start with teachers blogging for themselves, blogging for professional development, blogging to model for their fellow teachers and then ultimately for their students. We can’t teach our students responsible use of a blog if we haven’t experienced it ourselves.

2 On August 13th, 2006, Mark Ahlness said:

Wesley, it is indeed amazing, and exciting to be a part of it. I listened to an interview with Sifrey a couple of days ago on NPR, just incredible!

But the lengths to which some are willing to go to pretend this is not happening or prevent others from even learning about what is happening is absolutely dumbfounding to me. Latest case in point: Technorati is blocked in my school district. Think about what this means. Heck, as far as I’m concerned, DOPA is already here. - Mark

3 On August 13th, 2006, Wesley Fryer said:

I agree Diane, amen. We need to have experiences ourselves as educators with web 2.0 tools first, only then can we expect larger numbers of teachers to use these tools effectively with students.

Mark:

I wonder what the justification for your IT department blocking Technorati was/is? It is sad that in order to block a site like that, I would guess most school authorities don’t feel accountable to anyone… Have you considered submitting a request to them to ask for it to be unblocked? Have you tried using Tor to see if you can bypass it (http://tor.eff.org)? Obviously the best approach would be to have them unblock it, but if not….