The company’s “State of the Blogosphere” report also indicates that a new blog is created every second and the phenomenon has grown 60 times larger than it was three years ago.
In his periodic report, most recently published Monday, Technorati’s Dave Sifry said that at the rate which blogs are booming, the blogosphere doubles about every 5.5 months.
"There has never in human history been that many communications sources," Jeff Hess wrote on his blog, Have Coffee Will Write.
The blogosphere is comprised of entries on just about every subject, featuring political viewpoints, discussions of major news events, observations of bored teenagers and children, experience of job-seekers, complaints from disgruntled employees and self-praise from corporate marketing and public relations departments.
Sifry also reported that about 1.2 million new posts occur daily, or 50,000 an hour. His report also indicated that major news events drive spikes in activity, with the number of legitimate postings at its highest after the London train bombings in July 2005 and during the recent confirmation hearings for U.S. Justice Samuel Alito.
Hurricane Katrina produced a huge surge in postings, but the disaster didn't cause a record number of legitimate blogs because a considerable number of postings were spam, Sifry said in his report.
Along with the rise in popularity of blogs are blog-related annoyances. Almost 10 percent of new blogs are machine-generated, according to Sifry, who noted that "spings," or spam-generated pings, can make up 60 percent of Technorati's daily pings.
"There has been an increase in the overall noise level in the blogosphere, most notably in the number of spam and fake pings that are sent," Sifry said. "These spam pings are fake or bogus notifications that a blog has been updated; in some cases, these spings can amount to a denial of service attack."
Still, blogging is proving to be worth the trouble for many creators. Technorati’s information shows that 13.7 million bloggers continue to post three months after their launch. The site's “Blog Finder” counts more than 850,000 blogs in 2,500 categories.
Additionally, according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project results released last month, about one in four Internet users have read a blog. Pew has estimated that 53 million Americans have used the Internet to publish personal thoughts, images or files.
