stedavies.com - communications consultant

The argument for the notion that Twitter is killing blogging was quashed today (well, in the UK at least) by Research Director of Hitwise, Robin Goad, who published new data that shows the number of UK visits to blogs is at an all-time high. In other words, blogs are receiving more traffic by people in the UK than ever before.

Robin says, “UK Internet visits to weblogs reached an all time high last week. As the chart below illustrates, Blogs and Personal Websites accounted for 1.19% of all UK traffic, equivalent to one in every 84 internet visits.”

Interestingly, in terms of growth rate, Robin also notes that UK traffic to blogs has increased (208%) much quicker than traffic to ‘News and Media’ sites (70%). Although, in terms of volume, traffic to the latter is still larger.

I think this data illustrates that blogs have a long way to go in terms of growth and readership. Some predicted their demise when Facebook hit the mainstream, and now that Twitter’s the social media darling similar thoughts have been aired also. Nick Denton seems to think blogs are in their infancy too. He said Jason Calacanis was “10 years too early” when he sold Weblogs Inc. to AOL for a reported $25m back in 2005. Time will tell.

In related news:

Neil Vineburg points to some research on US blog publisher and readership demographics featured by E-marketer. Interesting to see the age difference between the average blog writer and reader.