With their usual flair, The Boston Herald declares “Americans aren’t all agog for blogs.” …
They cite new data from Forrester Research, which reports that fewer than two percent of Americans who go online read blogs once a week or more. A mere four percent of technocrats say they read blogs.
To these numbers, I say bah. Now don’t get me wrong. I mean no disrespect towards Forrester or their data. I am sure it’s spot on. But it’s time for someone to devise a new way to measure the impact of blogs – and it aint eyeballs.
Right now everyone’s trying to apply old-school mass-media-style metrics to a global medium that really never existed before. That’s like trying to eat soup with a fork. You could do it, but your mileage may vary.
The real way to measure the impact of the blogosphere, even as the Herald notes, is with a closer examination of its influence. Someone, for example, should study the number of press articles that every day reference blogs or bloggers. I have a Yahoo News feed that looks for this stuff and I can tell you it’s a lot. Just lookie here. Now some of those articles could be the hype bubble we all talk about, but something bigger is going on here. The press are reading blogs and that’s all that counts in my book. (Hat tip to Dwight Silverman for the find)
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.
