PCWorld.com - 2004: Big Year for Blogs

Blogs growing steadily as they become more professional and as MSM takes notice. They'd better take notice because they continue to lose influence as one of the Web's early dreams was everyone can become a publisher. Now, if everyone could become an editor, too!

"Pew began surveying Internet users about blogs in the spring of 2002, and has charted a steady growth in blog readership since 2003, from 11 percent of U.S. Internet users to 27 percent in November 2004.

Most of these readers, 57 percent, are male. Less than half of the surveyed blog readers, 48 percent, are under 30, and a whopping 82 percent are long-time Internet users, with more than six years experience online.

Internet users who were new to the medium, used the Internet less often or had less education were less likely to be bloggers or blog readers, the Pew study finds."