For class, we looked at the website technorati.com, and read the 'State of the Blogosphere' report from 2011. It was interesting at first, however, it soon became information overload. I enjoy looking at graphs and charts, as I am a very visual person, however, I think I may have looked at about 300 and I still can barely remember what they were all about. They had studied different types of bloggers, whether they were hobbyists, entrepreneur, corporate, etc. I think the thing I found most interesting was the time that people spent blogging. Typically, for a hobbyist (which I guess would define those of us taking this class), the average amount of time spent blogging was 1 to 3 hours a week, and they would post up to 3 blog entries a week. It was interesting to see that those who blogged full time for a corporate (which, I didn't even know you could do that. Please sign me up for that job), spent up to or even over 40 hours a week blogging. Also, studies showed that most who were blogging for a business felt that it tremendously helped the business out. Most bloggers are also male, which was a surprise to me because of the blogs I've heard about or have read, most have been directed towards females. Bloggers were also typically college graduates (which will be me in a few months, thank God). I've often thought about how it would be fun to get paid to blog, but most showed that they would not get paid for advertisements and for product reviews. Another thing I found interesting was that some felt they would only allow advertisements that were in line with the values of their blog. If you ask me, that's just dumb. Money is money, and, no one looks at advertisements any way. Somewhere in the 90% range of bloggers said that if they were reviewing a product, they disclosed that it was a sponsorship or that they were getting money. The other 10%, I'd like to know where there ethics are. Surely they aren't the ones who are concerned with who advertises on their sites - Heck, they'd probably even allow the Westboro Baptist Church or Satan to advertise.
In all, I felt that the graphs were too much to understand, and, oftentimes, too boring to care, but I'm glad that the information is there and that someone is probably happy with it all. One more thing that I found interesting on the site was the top 100 blogs. Most were corporate, the Huffington Post, or TMZ (gag me with a spoon) but some were blogs that I think belonged to normal people who blogged about their normal lives, and that gives me hope!
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