Blogging Has Not Peaked: A Friendly Rebuttal of Steve Rubel

As being widely reported on the metablogs, Technorati came out with their semi-kinda-quarterly report on the “State of the Live Web.”

There are some interesting charts, including the “Popularity of Blogs vs. the MSM” graph:

However, there’s another chart that Edelman e-guru Steve Rubel’s getting excited about: the Daily Posting Volume chart. The chart’s data illustrates that the frequency of blog posts isn’t where it was several months ago (by a small margin):

Even if the number of posts are going down (as referenced by just the Technorati universe, not other universes, as well), I’m not inclined to believe that this means that “blogging has peaked.” Companies are just starting to “get it”, just as culture and the traditional news media is starting to accept it. I see this every day at work, as more and more people go to blogs to get information — more than ever before. So, blog influence has in no way or means peaked.

Also, the international community is just starting blogging, as broadband penetration reaches futher…so it’s also an extremely American-centric way of thinking about it. If you look at Edelman’s own “blogging around the world” report from a few months back, it shows that the Asian market is flooded with “personal” blogs, but not many other types. This should strike a chord with any of the “original bloggers” (go us) who know that this was the case with U.S. blogs, 8 years ago. I think it’s parallel.

Also not taken into account is the difference between “journalistic/trade/opinion” bloggers versus the “OMGZ! Sanjaya is awfulz!” bloggers. My bet is that the amount of “personal” bloggers is dying off as they move to social networks laden with RSS and other types of blog-like CMSes. So, blog consumption and usage has merely changed and morphed and evolved, not peaked.

Let the debate begin.

Technorati Tags: Blogging, blogs, blog, peak, peaked, Technorati, State of the Live Web, Steve Rubel