Blogosphere Growing

David Sifry of the Technorati Weblog has a report on the state of the blogosphere based on Technorati's own stats:

The blogosphere is over 60 times bigger than it was only 3 years ago.

New blog creation continues to grow. Technorati currently tracks over 75,000 new weblogs created every day, which means that on average, a new weblog is created every second of every day - and 19.4 million bloggers (55%) are still posting 3 months after their blogs are created. That's an increase both absolute and relative terms over just 3 months ago, when only 50.5% or 13.7 million blogs were active. In other words, even though there's a reasonable amount of tire-kicking going on, blogging continues to grow as a habitual activity.

In addition to that, about 3.9 million bloggers update their blogs at least weekly.

The Technorati stats clear up some minor mysteries about the political blog survey I did awhile back. Of the hundreds of blogs I personally bookmarked, many are now defunct or on hiatus. It would be useful to know what happens at 3-month marks over the course of a year or two. Personally, there are blogs I wish had lasted longer. My guess is that the most successful political blogs will continue to be team efforts simply because human nature prefer one button stops; and team blogs also make it possible for individuals to step away for a time without adversely affecting the blog or for others to write weekly columns, etc. But my hat will continue to go off to quality one-person blogs that hang in there month after month. They should know they are appreciated.