Pew study: Blogs busted out in 2004

IDG News Service - Last year proved to be a big one for blogs and bloggers, according to data released from the Pew Internet & American Life Project. Blog readership jumped 58% between February and November and included 32 million U.S. citizens in 2004. More than 8 million U.S. citizens have created a Web-based diary, and one in 10, or around 14 million U.S. Internet users, has contributed thoughts or comments to a blog.
The figures released by the Pew Research Center are just the latest in a series of studies on the growth of blogs on the Internet and show that the online diaries are becoming important sources of information for Internet users. Despite gains in popularity, blogs are still the domain of Internet cognoscenti. More than 62% of those surveyed said they don't know what a blog is, Pew said.
Pew began surveying Internet users about blogs in the spring of 2002 and has charted a steady growth in blog readership since 2003, from 11% of U.S. Internet users to 27% in November 2004.
Most of these readers, 57%, are male. Less than half of the surveyed blog readers, 48%, are under 30, and a whopping 82% are longtime Internet users, with more than six years of experience online.
Internet users who were new to the medium, who used the Internet less often or who had less education were less likely to be bloggers or blog readers, the Pew study found
Technology used to read blogs is also beginning to take hold. The study found that 5% of Internet users received their news from RSS aggregators or XML readers that pull information from blogs and other Web pages.