Blogs Burgeon To 50 Million, But Growth Is Slowing

The blogosphere has grown more than 100 times the size it was 2003, with Technorati tracking its 50 millionth blog, according to David Sifry's latest "State of the Blogosphere" report. However, Sifry, CEO of Technorati, said in his report that he thinks it's unlikely the number of blogs will continue to double every six months, as they have for about two years.

"As of July 2006, about 175,000 new weblogs were created each day, which means that on average, there are more than two blogs created each second of each day," he said in a statement posted on Technorati.

"Can this possibly continue," he asked. "Will I be posting about the 100 millionth blog tracked in February of 2007? I can't imagine that things will continue at this blistering pace - it has got to slow down."

Sifry said Technorati shows that the number of blogs doubled in 40 days at the end of 2003. In early 2004, the rate the blogosphere growth had slowed to the point where it doubled every four months. By July 2004, the blogosphere doubled in size every six months. That growth rate remained relatively stead until now, when it is taking closer to seven months for the number of blogs tracked by Technorati to double.

In July 2006, Technorati tracked 1.6 million postings daily, or 18.6 per second and postings increase with major news events. For example, this week, the most popular topics among bloggers include AOL, advertising, Bush, Flickr, Hezbollah, Iran, Iraq and Israel.According to BlogPulse, a Nielsen metrics blog, Mel Gibson, Fidel Castro and his brother Raul Castro were among the top personalities named in blogs last week, while the weather was the hottest topic.

Sifry said sites like BoingBoing are appearing in the top tier of inbound blog sources, or hyperlinks citing sources of information. According to Sifry, 11 of the top 90 sites are blogs while the majority is still mainstream media.

English reclaimed its top position (34 percent) for blogging languages with Japanese close behind at 33 percent, according to Sifry, who acknowledges that Korean and French language blogs are underreported.

Technorati uses filters to blog Spam blogs, or splogs, but Sifry said that some junk blogs continue to get through.

"We're always going to pay a price to make the blogosphere as open a place as possible, and Technorati will always have some results that are spammy," Sifry wrote in his State of the Blogosphere report.0