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The Blogosphere Is Standing Still

We were once made to believe that there will come a day when every man, woman, and child would own a blog. That the Blogosphere would keep expanding as long as the universe would be able to contain it. Well, unsurprisingly, it turns out that the previous statements are just hyperbole.

In actuality, as pointed out by Valleywag, the Blogosphere has stopped expanding. While the total number of blogs has been increasing, this is largely due to people creating a blog, then realizing that they have nothing to contribute, and then abandoning the blog. The number of active blogs on the other hand, remains largely unchanged, and the magic number is somewhere in the vicinity of 15.5 million active blogs.

Not only is this a good thing, but it makes perfect sense that while other forms of social media are seeing strong growth, blogging has plateaued. It can largely be attributed to the 1% rule, or more generally the Pareto Principle. Not everyone has something interesting to say and for everyone to be better off, not everyone has to say something.

I think Jeff Jarvis correctly captured the essence of the situation,

A common misconception about interactivity is that everyone has to do it for it to be successful. But, in fact, if a small proportion of a community chooses to contribute, they can create great value for all.

This is also precisely why other forms of social media are growing. Take social bookmarking or socially driven sites for example. A large amount of the content is contributed by a small percentage of the community and the rest of the users either just interact with the content or simply consume it. Therefore, these mediums can grow just because the interacting and consuming community can grow while the contributers can largely remain stagnant. Similarly, while the number of active blogs are plateauing, I have no doubt that the blog audience is still growing steadily.

Sreejith, April 27, 2007

Well, its perfectly logical. I knew something like this would be there. Of course, it was just one of my saturday evening crazy ideas.

Anyway, the situation that everybody would have blogs is like, everyone being a TV broadcaster or Radio guy. This would come to like, all are publishers and none are viewers. Scary !!

Brian, April 27, 2007

I presume that the bar labeled Mar 2006 is actually March 2007? (sorry, it's the scientist in me; I've spent too much time reviewing other people's data.)

Mark Hopkins, April 30, 2007

I think a large factor in the stall in blogging's growth may have something to do with the compensation model, and the fact that for the large majority of bloggers, it simply doesn't pay to be an independent journalist.

I wrote about it on my blog (follow the website link)

Zach Katkin, April 30, 2007

I have seen the same trends in my own clients. A lot of people are interested in blogs, especially interested in the kinds of benefits they provide, but uninterested, unwilling, or incapable of providing the time and contributions necessary to make them sucessful and keep them growing.

On another note, although I've known for sometime that only a small percentage of users actually participate in communities, or blogs, I find it ironic the way this mirrors conventional media. The net is advertised as breaking down barriers in terms of media creation and delivery... and it can and does in some instances. But, in most only a few people are generating content for the masses, and when those people become corrupted, or are misrepresented we are hovering dangerously close to conventional media where a few people control it for the majority.