Blogging has taken the world by storm, especially in the technology savvy community that we live in today. Technorati has tracked over 50 million blogs since 2006, with an astonishing rate of 175,000 new blogs a day! So imagine how many more blogs have been created up till this day since their annual reports began in 2004. This is the new alternative and modern trend of writing, be it for news purposes, entertainment, or as a personal diary. Blogging is also becoming more mainstream, though not replacing the traditional media.
According to Sussman (2009), the majority of bloggers are a highly educated and affluent group, with research showing that almost half of them having a graduate degree. Besides that, demographics show that two-thirds of bloggers are males aged between 18 to 44.
(Source: Technorati.com, 2009)
McLean (2009) reports four different types of bloggers which are the hobbyist (72%), part-timers (15%), self-employeds (9%), and professionals (4%). The hobbyist blogs for fun, without earning any income as compared to part-timers , self-employed's, and professionals who earn money from it. Thus, in a nutshell, the blogosphere in 2009 focused more on professional bloggers and micro-blogs.
However, this blogging trend varies from country to country. In Europe for instance, blogging is not a popular trend among the people. Only 2% of them write blogs, 11% reads them, and 37% are not even aware of blogs (Rubel, 2006). Whereas compared to America and Asia, the blogging trend has been picked up quite fast in the past decade. Some of the popular American entertainment blogs include perezhilton.com and people.com.
Prevalent Blogs
In the Malaysian blogosphere, there are certain blogs which are more prevalent than others. The majority of the influential blogs write about personal events, accounting for 28% while 16% write about politics or technology (Loone, 2007). According to Wong (2009), some of the top bloggers in Malaysia include Kenny Sia (personal blog), Anwar Ibrahim, and Lim Kit Siang (political blogs). The benefits that these blogs bring to the Malaysian context are that society can have an alternative point of view without strict media censorship through these political blogs. Personal blogs on the other hand, make way for entertainment and advertising purposes.
References:
Loone, S 2007, ’50 most influential blogs in Malaysia’, Sloone.wordpress, weblog post, 6 February, viewed 13 September 2010, <http://sloone.wordpress.com/2007/02/06/50-most-influential-blogs-in-malaysia/>
McLean, J 2009, State of State of the Blogosphere 2009 Introduction, Technorati, 19 October, viewed 15 September 2010, <http://technorati.com/blogging/article/state-of-the-blogosphere-2009-introduction/>
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