Does anyone know of any recent stats on blog usage in Europe? I asked on Wednesday following the release of such stats for the US by the Pew Internet project.
Yesterday, The Guardian provided some answers with news of Britons’ activities with blogs as published by the ICM research firm for Microsoft’s MSN Spaces.
Selected highlights:
- The ICM report suggests that, with 27 million internet users across the UK, the country now holds nearly 7 million bloggers – equivalent to nearly one in nine of the population. [That’s almost 11 percent, according to the latest population numbers.]
- One in five people were blogging to express their views, while 6 percent said they did it to campaign for political issues.
- The most popular subjects for blog readers were technology, music, news, film news and sport.
- Four out of five of those surveyed still trusted mainstream media more than they trusted bloggers. Two-thirds said they took what they read on blogs with a pinch of salt.
One interesting parallel from this research and the US study shows that 60 percent of bloggers in the UK say their writings are to express themselves and are not a form of journalism. The figure for the US is 65 percent.
The next research I’d like to see would be on other European countries, notably France, Germany, Spain and Italy. Anyone?
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Neville Hobson is the author of the popular NevilleHobson.com blog which focuses on business communication and technology.
Neville is currentlly the VP of New Marketing at Crayon. Visit Neville Hobson’s blog: NevilleHobson.com.
