Early this morning – as part of my planned “Manhattan Project” – a friend of mine and I …
… hit Grand Central Station and (accosted?) asked as many people as we could in one hour three basic questions: have you heard of blogs, if so, do you read them and which ones do you read? My intent: to get a purely anecdotal perspective for just how many of my fellow New Yorkers are aware of blogs. While in no way is this statistically viable, talking with the peeps did turn up some interesting findings…
- First, my friend and I spoke to 32 New Yorkers. This is quite a feat given that today was the coldest day of the year and that this is one tough city. We hung out in front of the bagel shop and quizzed folks while they were waiting on line for chow. Survey tip: when people are waiting to graze, it’s easy to ask them a question if you wear friendly garb.
- If you want to try this experiment yourself in Grand Central, please get a permit first. We had to eventually leave warm Grand Central for Starbucks, per the fine folks at the NYPD. My wife warned me this would happen. Thanks Lisa! I shoulda listened.
- Of the 32 people we spoke to, the majority – 18 folks – said they have heard of blogs. Meanwhile, 14 others gave me blank stares. We spoke to a diversity of people of different ages, genders and race. We even spoke to a baby, but no worries – we didn’t count him. (Rumor has it he’s an active blogger.)
- Of these 18 folks 6 of them – or 19% if you’re scoring at home – said they read blogs. Not bad! The blogs they said they read include Drudge, Andrew Sullivan and even internal corporate bogs. Quite interesting for what many feel is a very liberal city!
Oddly enough, Sebastian Kiel, one of my readers conducted this same “highly scientific” study in Hamburg, Germany today. How cool is that? He writes in…
“Here are my results and let me give you some perspective. I did the questionnaire between 4pm and 4.30 pm. It was getting dark outside and we had s&*t weather. No rain, but cold wind, rain was imminent. I asked people on a “Village” kind of street, a trendy part, mainstream shops, higher income, close to the city sea. I had three additional questions prepared for a customer of mine whose customer center was right on that street. I tried to ask people who looked like they use the Internet.
Several flaws are already obvious: go in the morning rush hour, choose another location, choose better weather. So, I might go again on the weekend (no promise).
Here are the results:
I got to ask 32 people, about the same number said they had no time.
3 people knew what a weblog is.
They don’t read any…”
So there you have it – results on two continents. A special shout out thanks goes out to my friend and Sebastian! (Sebastian, eich bin ein blogger? I’d love to link to you.) Did anyone else conduct a similar experiment? I was pretty impressed that 50% of my survey respondents knew what a blog was and 18% read them. Not bad considering the diversity of my group.
Steve Rubel is a PR strategist with nearly 16 years of public relations, marketing, journalism and communications experience. He currently serves as a Senior Vice President with Edelman, the largest independent global PR firm.
He authors the Micro Persuasion weblog, which tracks how blogs and participatory journalism are changing the public relations practice.
