Periodically, Dave Sifry, CEO of Technorati, posts the State of the Blogosphere articles in his “Sifry’s Alerts” blog. Here are a few interesting points from his October 17 report:
- A new weblog is created about every second.
- Recent spikes are partly due to increase in Chinese blogs.
- 55% of new bloggers are still posting 3 months later.
- 13% of all blogs update weekly (or more).
Technorati is currently tracking 18.9 million weblogs. The blogosphere is doubling in size approximately every 5 months. That rate has remained constant for three years.
The image to the right indicates spikes in blogging activity, tied to historic events. Several months ago, Sifry described the blogosphere as the exhaust of the human attention stream. It’s the first time in history that a written history of peoples experiences is being laid down for mass consumption and for the record.
It seems to me that this is an entirely new kind of content that is layering over our more formally published knowledge. It is not perfect, by any stretch, but to call it valueless, would mean denying ourselves of some of the most original ideas to be available to humanity. In a time of rapid change, it’s original ideas that will help us solve brand new problems.
The linchpin to truly leveraging this and other networked digital information is a literacy that addresses dynamic and participatory information environments. We need to learn and teach how to:
- Expose the truth when information is increasingly networked (coming from almost anyone, anywhere).
- Employing information that is digital and constantly changing.
- Expressing ideas when our ideas must compete for attention in an overwhelming information environment.
- Use information ethically, when we have become so dependent on what we know and can learn.
2¢ Worth.