Out with the old

Apparently, this site is one of 14.4 million other similar sites. Presumably, and I’m certain someone far smart than me will be able to formulate this better, of those 14.4 million, only a portion of them can be directly compared to this site. Of that portion, there will be other factors that will set my site aside as well, geography, topic coverage, age of the author, average of the readership etc etc.

I understand why it’s good to know how many blogs there are, and I think technorati is doing a good job collating and publishing these kinds of figures, but how do those figures affect me? Do I care that 80,000 new blogs are created each day, especially as only 36,000 or so of them will make it beyond the first few months? What I believe is lacking is the next level of detail, the key one being geography. However as the large majority of new blogs are created using a free tracking service – blogspot, livejournal, msn spaces – which offer no way to track where the author is located then we have a problem, don’t we.

Then again, if it’s one thing the interwebnet is good at it’s finding solutions, so why has this one perpetuated for so long? Is it because those in the US have their “rest of world” goggles on? Is it only non-US blogs that care about these facts? (I use the term care advisedly, I don’t CARE but I am interested) Should we be leading the way… when I say we… I mean the people that actually DO things, not people like me who merely pontificate from below and hope that someone somewhere is listening.

Of course this swings back around to the thoughts of community and niche. how they form whether we like the idea or not, and how categorising blogs and their influence is a hugely vast and completed job because there are no rules or guidelines to follow, no structure to how things are done, with everything both global and local at the same time.

The big numbers are important but it’s the more focussed info that bloggers need if they are to get an idea of what their “competition” is, what the trends are in their neighbourhood. I want to know how many new blogs there have been in the UK, in Europe. How many are personal sites, how many are “for profit” ventures?

No, I’m not overly bothered by these thoughts, nor will I expend much energy pursuing them, but I am curious. I guess that’s common after spending over five years on a hobby.