The “I” in Blogging
The blogosphere is always generating - and referencing - a ton of great data. This time, in a recent post on the blogosphere by Pranam Kolari on eBiquity, he suggests that the use of “I” is experiencing a downward trend and that this correlates with the number of english language posts having plateaued. Though he is not explicit, I am guessing that Mr. Kolari assumes bloggers use the word “I” in their posts because they are often referencing their opinions and therefore “I” is a good gauge.
I find it hard to believe, but as Steve Rubel says on Micro Persuasion, it’s hard to dispute.
First, the facts on “I”. In a recent Nielsen BuzzMetrics analysis, the trend is clear.
Slowly but surely, since last September, there has been a plateau if not a slight, steady decline in “I”. Mr. Kolari goes on to say:
BlogPulse reports that around 45% of all postings feature an “I”. Technorati indexes around 400000 posts featuring “I” per day. Merging the two data points Technorati indexes around 900000 posts per day, or rather around 40000 posts per hour, a number which has seen no change for almost a year. Nothing new here, the English blogosphere has plateaued.
Have we hit the limit of blog publishing in the english speaking world?
It would seem that blogging is just evolving and becoming more about reaching out to other bloggers, addressing news and linking to sites of interest. It’s about sharing more, and “me” less.
David Sifry’s Technorati analysis here shows that the trend had been steadily upward until last year when a ’spikey’ plateau occurred. In his comments to Kolari’s post, he says the “I” data may be right.
Still, with my own anecdotal data, it is hard for me to believe that blogging has plateaued when -in spite of my online avocation- I run into people everyday who don’t know or understand what a blog is. It’s too soon to say or suggest we’ve hit the limit.
-- John Ebbert
Sphere It
March 1st, 2007 at 2:24 pm
There are so many poorly researched and badly written blogs, not to mention the well-known flogs, the annoying splogs, and the rarely updated blogs. Sure, blogs can be entertaining and informative and also serve as excellent PR tools – but only if they provide unique and credible content that is of value to the reader. But creating such high-quality content takes time, effort and journalistic skills.
It seems that for every good blog, there are hundreds of useless blogs. I call this “The Blogosphere’s Ozonhole” and it’s still getting bigger and bigger. I’m afraid it will cause a climate change in journalistic standards. Writers and readers alike are already getting used to short-lived five sentence “articles” that could eventually completely replace in-depth reporting. Let’s hope that newspapers will not become like blogs, because they have to compete with them for readers and advertising dollars. Who will investigate an issue for days or months if there’s no audience left for real journalism, which is absolutely indispensable for a democratic society.
March 5th, 2007 at 12:51 am
I believe what he is missing is the implementation of corporate blogs and aggregation blogs. These blogs are less apt to utilize ‘I’ because they speak to an organization or to a technology. They are less likely to be personal.