More evidence that blogging has peaked in the English speaking world

Pranam Kolari at ebiquity has used some simple research to conclude that the English speaking blogosphere has reached its peak. Aside from the fact that Steve Rubel thinks these figures represent the “English” blogosphere (WTF??), and using Technorati to track all blogs (as used in this research) is about as reliable as counting the number of people you can cram into a Mini and concluding that the number of people in the car is representative of the population of the world, the figures do lend themselves to a belief I’ve held for some time, and that is that blogging growth has peaked in English speaking countries, and likely across Europe as well.

Famously though research firm Gartner did predict such a decline in blogging last year, however there were using the Mini test and totally forgot about Asia in stating that there we were about to experience a world wide downturn in blogging…as I wrote at the time:

“They’re [Gartner is] wrong. Totally wrong. Sure, it [blogging] will peak in 2007 in the Western world, if it hasn’t already (I believe that we’ve probably already passed the peak point now), but it won’t worldwide…Asia is where it’s all happening, and Asia will deliver plenty of good growth in blogging.”

The figures I dug up back in December were quite remarkable.

There are 1.3 billion people in China, and only 123 million have internet access with various reports putting the broadband number of those at between 70 and 80 million users. Less than 10% of the population of China currently has internet access. According to an October 2004 report, the number of Internet users in China was growing at 800,000 a week. That’s 800,000 people every single week that haven’t tried blogging. Depending on the source, the number of bloggers in China varies between 20 million people and 35 million, but even by taking the lower figure of 20 million, you’d be looking at roughly 15% of all internet users in China who blog. If 800,000 new people are joining the internet a week, that’s potentially 120,000 new blogs every single week.

Expect to see more research this year showing the English speaking blogosphere has passed its peak, and more evidence that in the same way China is set to have more internet users that the United States this year, that Asia, with China at the top will be the powerhouse of international blog growth.

The question I would like to finish on though, is what’s next? what’s next for the blogging communities of the United States, Canada, the UK and Australia? Where do we go from here? Is the decline be terminal or are we seeing a classic fruit fly test correction resulting in less blogs but a more sustainable number in the not so distant future? Food for thought.

Originally posted on February 25, 2007 @ 9:34 pm