10 Million Blogs and The Britney Spears Linux Test

 

10,000,000

 

Last week, leading blog search engines Technorati, PubSub and BlogPulse all said that they were indexing over 10 million blogs.

That's more than one for every person in New York city.

That's more than one for every person in London.

And that's just the blogs they know about. Others estimate the true figure to be between  30,000,000 and 50,000,000. 

Blogging is snowballing. The mainstream media are regularly introducing their readers to the best blogs as they republishing the cream of the gossip, breaking news and analysis from top blogs. These high-profile blogs are inspiring their readers to create their own blogs.

Over the next few years I believe blogging will lose its 'geeky' image, as more *shudder* normal people start blogs. The sort who care more about Britney Spears than the Linux Kernel. (At the moment my Britney Spears Linux Test shows 'Linux' beating 'Britney' by 175,000 to 118,000. When Britney triumphs, the geeks will have lost.)

Idiot-proof blog-publishing tools are the fuel of the blog explosion. Services such as Blogger, MSN Spaces, Yahoo 360 and LiveJournal let anyone create a blog, for free, in under five minutes. 

I believe that blogs are close to joining DVDs, email and instant messaging in the ranks of once-geeky things embraced by an increasingly tech-savvy mainstream.

I shall keep you posted on the results of the Britney Spears Linux test, as I know you're merely feigning your indifference...