Funferal

Measuring the blogosphere

There has been quite a degree of attention to Perseus’ survey of weblogs (summarised here), which attempted to quantify, and classify by demographic factors, the number of weblogs. Kairos News summarises some of the reactions. Chief among them are observations of the skewed sample that was used – which counted 8 hosted blog/journal services, but ignored (non-blogspot) Blogger, and (non-TypePad) Movable Type weblogs.

Once again Orlowski in his ‘coverage‘ in the Register has highlighted – as part of a rant against the format/medium – that blogging is most popular amongst teenage girls. Orlowski had previously demonstrated his latent misogyny with some masterful writing:

Those raging-hormones… capricious tantrums, those endless hours devoted to navel gazing … the helpless feeling that world is conspiring against you … the frustration of trying to use grown-up words, but failing … popstar fantasies … toe-curling slang … those nightmarish swings between binge eating and dangerous, faddish diets. It’s all there. And don’t even mention the first, awful encounter with alcohol.
…
Thankfully, not all blogs have to be so juvenile in content.

(all ellipsis points, other than those between the paragraphs belong to Orlowski).
Of course Orlowski is not alone in his elitism (though he does stand out). The Poynter piece on the survey (Quicklink A50477 on their site) had the following to say:

What’s most interesting to me are the 5% (maybe less) of blogs that rise to the top — the best of blogging, which includes some very talented and devoted writers, journalists, and topic experts who’ve embraced the blogging format. That teenage girls are dabbling in blogging is significant, but it’s just a part of the story. It’s that top 5% that is having the biggest impact on the media world. I’d like to see a study that focuses only on them.

At least here the involvement of teenage girls is seen as significant, but the important matter is understood to be ‘the impact on the media world.’ I’ve seen several other comments in like vain, but these miss the one valuable point made by Perseus: