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| SA yet to catch the blog wave |
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| BY IAIN SCOTT, ITWEB FINANCE EDITOR |
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| [Johannesburg, 3 January 2005] -
Blogs – online journals – have established themselves as a key part of online culture, with blog creation and readership soaring over the past year, according to a new study.The study, undertaken by Pew Internet & American Life Project (PIP) in November, shows that 27% of American Internet users say they read blogs. This is a 58% increase from the 17% who claimed to be blog readers last February.This means that by the end of last year, 32 million Americans were blog readers.The key driver was increased awareness of blogs during the US election campaign and other major news events, according to PIP director Lee Rainie.However, blogs have yet to enter the awareness of the majority of Internet users.“For all the excitement about blogs and the media coverage of them, blogs have not yet become recognised by a majority of Internet users. Only 28% of all Internet users know what a blog is,” Ranie says.He adds that 7% of the 120 million US adults who use the Internet – about eight million people – say they have created a blog.The popularity of blogs was made evident recently when dictionary publisher Merriam-Webster said that blog, defined as "a Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments and often hyperlinks", topped the list of the 10 most looked-up words on its Internet site in 2004.However, the picture is different in SA, says Arthur Goldstuck, MD of research firm World Wide Worx.“Blogging is not massive, but there is a cult following in SA,” Goldstuck says. “There is a number of blogs growing in popularity and there are areas where people engage or indulge in blogging.“But it's very much a niche thing in SA and completely unknown to the mainstream Internet users.”He adds that it is simply a matter of blogs not yet having caught on, partially because of a lack of awareness of their existence, and also of what can be done with them.“Blogs have enormous potential in Africa as a communications medium,” he says. In the early days of the Internet, there was the idea that anyone could publish a news site, but the reality was that people still had to have “enormous” resources to do so.However, Goldstuck says blogs are living up to those early promises of the Internet.
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