Eight percent of Internet users, or about 12 million American adults, keep a blog.
Thirty-nine percent of Internet users, or about 57 million American adults, read blogs--a significant increase since the fall of 2005.
The blogging population in the United States is young, evenly split between women and men, and racially diverse.
More than half (54%) of bloggers are under the age of 30. More than half live in the suburbs, another third live in urban areas and a scant 13% live in rural regions. Sixty percent are white, 11% are African American, 19% are English-speaking Hispanic and 10% identify as some other race. By contrast, 74% of Internet users are white, 9% are African American, 11% are English-speaking Hispanic and 6% identify as some other race.
The most popular topic among bloggers is their life and experiences.
Most bloggers don't think of what they do as journalism. 37% of bloggers cite "my life and experiences" as the primary topic of their blog. Politics and government ran a very distant second with 11% citing those issues of public life as the main subject of their blog. 7% are into entertainment-related topics, 6% sports, 5% general news and current events, 5% business, 4% technology, 2% religion, spirituality or faith and 1% each for a special hobby or a health problem/illness.
84% of bloggers describe their blog as either a "hobby" or just "something I do, but not something I spend a lot of time on." 59% of bloggers spend just one or two hours per week tending their blog. Only one in ten bloggers spend ten or more hours per week on theirs. 59% blog under a pseudonym and 46% under their own name.
Source: Pew Internet & American Life Project, a telephone survey of a nationally-representative sample of bloggers, July 19, 2006: Bloggers: A portrait of the Internet's new storytellers is a 33 page report about who are bloggers.
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