Blogs: Two born every second

Every second two new blogs are created.

According to recent statistics from blog-tracking site Technorati, the blogosphere has doubled every six months for the last three years. That's 175,000 new blogs per day worldwide. Technorati added its 50 millionth blog on 31 July, 2006.

The site's State of the Blogosphere report is released every three months by Technorati CEO Dave Sifry. Sifry has been tracking the blogosphere since 2002, and even he's surprised at the tremendous rate of growth for this quarter.

Sifry said on his own blog: "It is over 100 times bigger than it was just three years ago. Whenever I write about these statistics, I'm always asked by people, 'can it continue to grow this quickly?'. Frankly, I can't possibly imagine it continuing to grow at this pace - after all, there are only so many human beings in the world! It has to slow down."

For June, English gained as the most popular language among bloggers, at 39 per cent, followed by Japanese (31 per cent) and Chinese (12 per cent). The most popular times of day for English language bloggers to post is between 10:00(PST) and 14:00(PST), with another spike at 17:00(PST).

On average, there are 1.6 million posts per day, or 18.6 posts per second, according to Technorati. The blogosphere is also a barometer for the digitally connected world in that specific news events trigger an increase in daily postings. For instance, the start of the Israel-Hezbollah conflict sparked a jump in average activity to 2.5 million posts per day, according to Technorati statistics.

Spam is also an issue, not only for blog readers subscribing to dangerous feeds but also for blog-tracking sites. While Technorati is able to block 70 per cent of the pings for splogs (spam blogs), about eight per cent of the new blogs listed by Technorati are splogs. But these splogs usually remain within the Technorati index for less than a day, many times only for a few hours, according to Sifry.

While many blogs are personal diaries, a large number of them are news related. Many news organisations themselves have joined the blogosphere. The most linked-to sources for bloggers are also news outlets, according to the Technorati stats.

In May, Technorati cut a deal with the Associated Press through which Technorati will help plug AP articles. As part of the agreement, the blogging site will power a linked list of the "Top Five Most Blogged About" AP articles, and the list will appear on AP member websites that use AP Hosted Custom News.

Candace Lombardi writes for CNET News.com