A new Pew Internet & American Life survey of 2,251 American adults (aged 18 or older) found that of the adults using the Internet only 3% are logging on to read blogs. The survey results found that people who use the Internet were logging on to do the following activities:
Activity
Percentage
Email
77%
Search engine
63%
Get news
46%
Do job-related research
29%
Use instant messaging
18%
Do online banking
18%
Take part in chat room
8%
Make a travel reservation
5%
Read blogs
3%
Participate in online auction
3%
For bloggers and blog publishers the information can be both good and bad news. Bad in the fact the according to the survey the vast majority of Internet users are not logging on to read blogs but good because it means the potential for growth is very high. There is also the continuing issue that many people may be reading blogs without realizing they are on a blog. Of course, if the survey had also included teenagers the percentage of people using the Internet to read blogs would have gone up -- 20% of teens read blogs according to another PEW study.
The PEW survey can be found here and the full report with the blog data can be found in the PDF file.
