The consistently happiest days are, not surprisingly, vacation days and holidays. The overall happiest days of the last few years were election day (Nov. 4) and President Obama's inauguration (Jan. 20). On these days, people typically typed sentences with words like "pride" and "proud."

Some of the saddest days over the last few years have been the anniversaries of 9-11 and even the day before that solemn anniversary, Sept. 10. Michael Jackson's recent death also caused a drop in the average national happiness.

Analyzing blogs only measures the general climate of happiness across the entire United States (90 percent of the analyzed blogs were from the United States.) To find the level of happiness in your neck of the woods the researchers are now applying their software to 140-character Tweets.

"There are something like 1,000 tweets a minute," said Dobbs. "That's really a lot of data that we can analyze."

The new NielsenWire blog, accessed via the nielsen.com homepage, currently features, among other offerings, a special section devoted to the Games -- from historical ratings data on the most-watched opening ceremonies of all time to a feature on Chinese Olympians becoming product endorsers.

NielsenWire's content is supplemented by information culled from major newspapers, Web sites, and blogs.

While it could be said that blogs are just a younger person's folly, in our study this is not the case. Just one in ten (19%) Echo Boomers (those aged 18-31) regularly read a political blog and only 17 percent of Gen Xers (those aged 32-43) say the same. Matures (those aged 63 and older) are actually the generation most likely to be political blog readers as just over one-quarter (26%) say they regularly do so followed by 23 percent of Baby Boomers (those aged 44-62). Also, one hears of the rabid blogs on both sides of the political aisle, but just 22 percent of Republicans and 20 percent of Democrats regularly read blogs. Independents are the ones slightly more likely to read these, as just over one-quarter (26%) say they regularly read political blogs.

Looking at those who regularly do read political blogs, over half (54%) read one or two at least once a week with an additional 22 percent reading 3-4 at least once a week. And, while they may read these, they do not comment on them. Over two-thirds (69%) of those who regularly read blogs did not comment on one in the previous week. Republicans are slightly more likely than Democrats to comment. One-third of Republicans (34%) commented in the previous week compared to 28 percent of Democrats.

1. Instapundit
2. Don Surber
3. Science & Politics
4. Watcher of Weasesls
5. Michelle Malkin
6. National Journal's Blogometer
7. The Modulator
8. BloggersBlog.com
9. Boing Boing
10. Atrios
11. A Blog for All
12. Gothamist
13. mparent777
14. TFS Magnum
15. Alliance of Free Blogs
16. anglican.tk
17. Micropersuasion
18. Pajamas Media
19. BlogHer
20. The Jawa Report
21. Reddit
22. Soccer Dad
23. Nose on Your Face
24. aHistorically
25. The Anchoress
26. AmericaBlog
27. SFist
28. TBogg
29. HorsePigCow
30. Why Homeschool
31. The Daou Report
32. Sisu
33. MetaFilter
34. Megite
35. LAist
36. Captain's Quarters
37. Shakesville
38. Guy Kawasaki
39. Lucy by Lucy
40. Blue Star Chronicle
41. Official Google Blog
42. The Glittering Eye
43. asterisco.paradigma.pt
44. Read/WriteWeb
45. Hullabaloo
46. The Conservative Cat
47. Phillyist
48. The Social Customer Manifesto
49. The Next Net
50. Gateway Pundit
51. Crooks and Liars
52. Right Wing News
53. 10,000 Birds
54. O'Reilly Radar
55. Cowboy Blog
56. Business Opportunities Weblog
57. DCist
58. Creating Passionate Users
59. Citizens For Legitimate Government
60. What About Clients?
61. Rough Type
62. The Unofficial Apple Weblog
63. Dans la cuisine d'Audinette
64. The London Fog
65. Bostonist
66. Seattlest
67. Austinist
68. Indian Writing
69. Power Line
70. Firedoglake
71. Blog d'Elisson
72. Rhymes With Right
73. Written World
74. The Jeff Pulver Blog
75. blog d'eMeRY
76. Hugh MacLeod's gapingvoid
77. Catymology
78. Hugh Hewitt
79. Lifehacker
80. jordoncooper.com
81. Econbrowser
82. A Socialite's Life
83. Gates of Vienna
84. NevilleHobson.com
85. Waxy.org
86. A Life Restarted
87. The Volokh Conspiracy
88. See Also...
89. Dr. Sanity
90. Mudville Gazette
91. www.saysuncle.com
92. Privacy Digest
93. Londonist
94. Shanghaiist
95. Catholic and Enjoying It
96. Single Serve Coffee
97. Jeremy Zawodny's blog
98. ScienceBlogs
99. Basic Thinking Blog
100. Scobleizer

More than a third of UK bloggers risk the sack by posting derogatory or damaging details about their workplace, boss or colleagues, a survey claims.

Human resources company Croner, which commissioned the study, warned that such bloggers could be sacked from their job for gross misconduct.

Croner surveyed 2,000 people who keep a personal internet blog or diary and 39% said that they made harmful comments.

Bloggers should consider the potential impact of all postings, Croner said.

Four in every five blogs on some of the most popular websites contain potentially offensive content, such as pornography or adult language, claims new research.

***

Some of the most popular are shamelessly devoted to sex, such as the award-winning 'Belle de Jour, diary of a London call girl' and 'Girl with a one-track mind, diary of a sex fiend'.

Popular teen sites MySpace and YouTube are battling to remove porn from their sites, a problem that is made difficult because all of the content of these sites is made up of files that users have uploaded.

Computer software firm ScanSafe, which commissioned the Global Threat Report, also found more than one in every 20 blogs (six per cent) contain potentially catastrophic computer viruses, spyware or other harmful programs that can steal private or confidential information.

The survey is conducted quarterly, and the previous quarter marked the first time that Facebook was tops among both women and men.

Two blogs were in the female top 10 list for the first time: Pink Is the New Blog and What Would Tyler Durden Do? (WWTDD). Both blogs have an entertainment/gossip focus, which Mr. Weil says "is consistent with Gen Y females' current adoration with content surrounding celebrities and their 'uh oh' moments."

MySpace was second on the top 10 list for females, but it remained sixth for males, with the percentage of 17-to-25-year-old males listing it as their favorite moving up slightly from 13% in the previous quarterly listing to 14%.

Only 27% of the public said they were satisfied with the news but 76% of people inside it are satisfied.

Only 12% of the public read newspapers but 26% of the industry reads them.

32% of the public get their news from Tv but only 5% of the media does.

40% of the public gets their news form the internet but 60% of the media industry does.

Just over half the public said blogs are important but 86% of the media said they are.

He reckons on more and more blogs: "We'll reach a new principle in the democratic experience - one man, one blog."

The study shows that 100 percent of mothers have watched TV, been online, listened to the radio or received a direct mail promotion in the last week, while 91 percent have shopped at a retail store, 88 percent have read a magazine, and 86 percent have used a cell phone.

Mothers are also using emerging media, though not as often: the study shows that in an average week, 33 percent of moms watched video-on-demand, 32 percent have read a blog and 17 percent listened to an iPod.

Interestingly, 27 percent of moms would pay to eliminate online advertising, 24 percent would pay to stop email advertising, and 23 would do the same for TV, radio and blogs.

Several uber-A Listers have multiple posts in the Top 100, if not in the Top 10. Michelle Malkin does have the #6 post ("Danish cartoonists threatened by Muslim extremists"), plus 17 more. Engadget has ten in the Top 100, including a hilarious comment on a Teddy Bear USB drive with a removeable head at #22; Think Progress also has ten, including a clip of Bill Clinton talking about the war on terror from Fox News, at #11; Boing Boing lists eight times, including a critique of the digital rights protection measures on the new Coldplay CD, at #21.

As in life, all things Google resonated in the blogosphere - the Google Blog registered 11 top 100 posts, including a post on the company's acquisition of Writely at #10, and a post about Google in China at #17.

Some regularly-cited top bloggers did not make the top post list, including Gizmodo, Huffington Post, Techcrunch, and Gawker. Daily Kos had just one post on the list (#85, a transcript of Stephen Colbert's White House correspondents dinner speech).

1. 2006 Petition Against Changes in the Livejournal Interface on mother.livejournal.com, linked by 801 posts
2. Colbert Does the White House Correspondents Dinner on Crooks and Liars, linked by 622 posts
3. Keith Olbermann Delivers One Hell Of a Commentary on Rumsfeld from Crooks and Liars, linked by 359 posts
4. State of the Blogosphere, August 2006 from Sifry.com, linked by 339 posts.
5. Keith Olbermann's Special Comment on Bush: Who has left this hole in the ground? We have not forgotten, Mr. President. You have. May this country forgive you. from Crooks and Liars, linked by 330 posts.
6. Support Denmark: Why The Forbidden Cartoons Matter from MichelleMalkin.com, linked by 307 posts.
7. SNL: If Al Gore were President from Crooks and Liars, linked by 286 posts.
8. Milking it? from EU Referendum, linked by 284 posts.
9. State of the Blogosphere, February 2006 Part 1: On Blogosphere Growth from Sifry.com, linked by 282 posts.
10. State of the Blogosphere, April 2006 Part 1: On Blogosphere Growth from Sifry.com, linked by 269 posts.

Asia's blogosphere is surging forward with nearly half, 46 per cent, of those online actively blogging, according to research released by Microsoft's MSN and Windows Live Online Services Business. The research showed that blogging is a social phenomenon with Asians primarily blogging as a means to maintain and build their social connections and to express themselves. The research findings are reportedly based on an online survey of more than 25,000 MSN portal visitors across seven markets.

Microsoft noted that blogging as a corporate or business tool still appears to be nascent in most markets, with little interest from consumers in blogs from business or political leaders. The exceptions are South Korea where blogging is reported to have permeated all aspects of life and India where a culture of self improvement is seeing business related blogs become popular.

The report suggested that netizens in Asia are most interested in those blogs written by friends and family (74 per cent) while blogs by work colleagues were the second most popular blog but were a distant second with only a quarter of respondents showing interest. In South Korea and India, however, respondents are most interested in blogs covering a specific topic of interest, the report said.

Still, only three percent of Europe's estimated 130 million Internet users create blogs, it said, adding that most of the bloggers were in France, Italy and Spain.

"France today is still the country that blogs the most, with nearly one million active bloggers," the study said.

The report was based on a survey of 7,377 online consumers in seven countries -- Britain, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden.

It found that, unsurprisingly, bloggers tended to be young and first-adopters of new technology -- those for whom any IT innovation is a must-have.

After attracting 11.1 million unique visitors each month to the station's online social network, Skyblog.com, Mr. Bellanger is planning to reach for the skies in January. That is when he intends to spin off new blogs in German, Spanish and English to offer the same rich, raucous mix of the inner thoughts and videos of thousands of young bloggers.

A growing number of Americans are listening to podcasts, but very few do so every day.

The Pew Internet and American Life Project said Wednesday that 12 percent of Internet users have downloaded a podcast, an increase from 7 percent earlier in the year.

However, only about 1 percent said they download a podcast on a typical day -- unchanged from the survey earlier this year. The rest do so less frequently, perhaps only once.

***

While podcast downloading is still an emerging activity primarily enjoyed by early adopters, the range of content now available speaks to both mainstream and niche audiences," said Mary Madden, senior research specialist at Pew. "We are at a crossroads of a major transition in the way media content is delivered and consumed."

The array of individuals and mainstream media institutions that now provide podcasts has also expanded dramatically. For example, in November of 2004, Podcast Alley, a podcast directory website, listed fewer than 1,000 podcasts for download. Today Podcast Alley catalogs more than 26,000 different podcasts, totaling more than 1 million episodes. In addition to homegrown podcasts that cover topics ranging from music and fashion to religion and politics, mainstream media institutions such as NPR, the BBC and Comedy Central now regularly provide podcasted material as an alternative way to distribute their content.

But despite the fact that teens and college students account for a big chunk of the online video audience, BIGresearch estimated last month that the average age of U.S. viewers is an ancient 39. And according to data compiled by Nielsen/NetRatings, comScore and Quantcast, Web surfers ages 35 to 64 make up anywhere from 48% to 65% of YouTube's audience.

Despite the seeming omnipresence of online video, viewing those clips still isn't among the top three most common online activities, which Forrester Research found in April to be e-mail (96%), instant messaging (37%) and playing games (36%). Watching online video ranked fourth at 25%, outpacing downloading music (12%) and downloading movies (3%).

Among heavy Internet users studied by Universal McCann and InsightExpress, 54% watched online video or streamed live music. But that still lagged far behind shopping (84%), entering contests (80%), playing games (73%), listening to Internet radio (71%), reviewing a product (68%) and sharing photos (67%).

And here are some numbers for advertisers to mull over: When asked by the Online Publishers Association in March how they respond to online video ads, an impressive 31% said they checked out the company's Web site, while 14% went to a store to check out the product and another 14% requested more information.

About a third of those Europeans questioned said they had been put off making a purchase after reading negative comments on the Internet from customers or other web-users, while 52 percent said they had been persuaded to buy after a positive review on a blog.

Get it right, and blogs could be a boost to companies and even save on their advertising and marketing budgets.

Blogs, or weblogs, are a more trusted source of information (24 percent) than television advertising (17 percent) and email marketing (14 percent), the survey commissioned by Hotwire, a technology public relations consultancy, said.

But they still lag behind newspapers (30 percent).

More professional bloggers are looking at monetizing their blogs via information products according to a recent survey.

According to the survey, 42% of those surveyed plan to monetize their blogs by creating and marketing their own information products - a big jump from the 29% at the start of the year.

The survey, conducted by ePublishingDaily (this blog) and completed once in January 2006 and again in October 2006 showed a marked increase in bloggers taking a serious look at information product publishing as a viable means of monetizing their blogging efforts.

In stark contrast with these results, reliance on AdSense (and other contextual advertising programs) has fallen from 63% to 45% during the same period.

Washington-Younger voters turned out in higher numbers in Tuesday's US congressional elections, giving a lift to Democratic candidates in a contest that gave the party control of the US House of Representatives for the first time in 12 years. "This is a new generation," Hans Riemer, political director of Rock the Vote, an organization that seeks to mobilize young voters, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa. "They're more involved, more engaged, and less cynical."

Exit polls showed that voters between the ages of 18 and 29 cast 13 per cent of all votes, up from 11 per cent in the 2002 elections, the last non-presidential national election. Voter turnout is typically higher in presidential elections.

That increase is important because the proportion of young voters has become smaller in the same time period, causing the increase to outpace the growth in turnout among all voters, Rock the Vote said.

Young voters traditionally favour Democratic candidates and did so by a 22 point margin on Tuesday, the organization said, citing exit polls.

The Low Authority Group (3-9 blogs linking in the last 6 months)

The average blog age (the number of days that the blog has been in existence) is about 228 days, which shows a real commitment to blogging. However, bloggers of this type average only 12 posts per month, meaning that their posting habits are generally dedicated but infrequent.

The Middle Authority Group (10-99 blogs linking in the last 6 months)

This contrasts somewhat with the second group, which enjoys an average age not much older than the first at 260 days and which posts 50% more frequently than the first. There is a clear correlation between posting volume and Technorati authority ranking.

The High Authority Group (100-499 blogs linking in the last 6 months)

The third group represents a decided shift in blog age while not blogging much more frequently than the last. In keeping with the theme of the maturation of the blogosphere, it seems evident that many of these bloggers were previously in category two and have grown in authority organically over time. In other words, sheer dedication pays off over time.

The Very High Authority Group (500 or more blogs linking in the last 6 months)

In the final group we see what might be considered the blogging elite. This group, which represents more than 4,000 blogs, exhibits a radical shift in post frequency as well as blog age. Bloggers of this type have been at it longer - a year and a half on average - and post nearly twice a day, an increase in posting volume of over 100% from the previous group. Many of the blogs in this category, in fact, are about as old as Technorati and we've grown up together. Some of these are full-fledge professional enterprises that post many, many times per day and behave increasingly like our friends in the mainstream media. As has been widely reported, the impact of these bloggers on our cultures and democracies is increasingly dramatic.

The number of blog sites in China reached 34 million in August, a 30-fold increase from four years ago, state media said on Tuesday, despite a series of curbs on media and dissent.

China has more than 17 million people writing blogs (short for Web logs) and more than 75 million people reading them, Xinhua news agency said.

Authors of personal blogs choose their own subject and can instantly forward their writings to friends anywhere in China or the world.

"The rapid growth of blog sites in China also brought potential business opportunities to the advertising industry," Xinhua said. "Some blogs written by famous people attract millions of daily readers." The report said that out of the 34 million blog sites, 70 percent were "dormant," having remained unchanged for more than a month.

The results showed that while blogs are growing increasingly popular, relatively few Americans visit them regularly, if at all.

Asked how often they visited blogs, the responses from the 78% who said they used the Web, came out this way: frequently 10%, occasionally 9%, rarely 17%, never 40%, and 2% did not answer. That suggests that less than 2 in 10 Americans now visit blogs a lot or occasionally.

Asked which sources are accurate, true and unbiased, 66% named national TV.

National newspapers were chosen by 63%. The same percentage rated regional and local newspapers.

Radio was believed to be less accurate, chosen by just 55% of those surveyed.

Only 36% of respondents rated websites and just 24% rated blogs.

Technorati has been tracking the blogosphere, or world of weblogs, since November 2002, and I'm constantly amazed at the growth over the years. The blogosphere has been doubling in size every 6 months or so. It is over 100 times bigger than it was just 3 years ago.

Whenever I write about these statistics, I'm always asked by people, "Can it continue to grow this quickly?" Frankly, I can't possibly imagine it continuing to grow at this pace - after all, there are only so many human beings in the world! It has to slow down.

Technorati is now tracking over 50 Million Blogs.

The Blogosphere is over 100 times bigger than it was just 3 years ago.

Today, the blogosphere is doubling in size every 200 days, or about once every 6 and a half months.

From January 2004 until July 2006, the number of blogs that Technorati tracks has continued to double every 5-7 months.

About 175,000 new weblogs were created each day, which means that on average, there are more than 2 blogs created each second of each day.

About 8% of new blogs get past Technorati's filters, even if it is only for a few hours or days.

About 70% of the pings Technorati receives are from known spam sources, but we drop them before we have to send out a spider to go and index the splog.

Total posting volume of the blogosphere continues to rise, showing about 1.6 Million postings per day, or about 18.6 posts per second.

This is about double the volume of about a year ago.

The most prevalent times for English-language posting is between the hours of 10AM and 2PM Pacific time, with an additional spike at around 5PM Pacific time.

Results indicate that 43 percent of the students that completed the survey spend 10 hours or more a week on the internet. Google, Yahoo and Myspace are the most visited sites. Sixty-two percent of the students that completed the survey download photos; 24 percent of the students participate in online bulletin boards, groups or chats.

Twenty-two percent of the students write blogs. With regards to advertisements that are displayed online, 40 percent of the students are more likely to respond to an advertisement that is humorous while 28 percent prefer fact-based advertisements.

"College students spend the majority of their time on the internet as opposed to other mediums and their usage behaviors have evolved," says Jennifer Floren, founder and CEO of Experience Inc. "They no longer just surf websites, rather they now use [the internet] to communicate with peers, conduct research, share photos and view videos. As a result, advertisers have a much greater opportunity to reach 18- to 24-year-olds online in a far more meaningful way."

The Internet added 4.4 million new hostnames during July - the single largest gain of new sites in a single month, according to Internet services firm Netcraft. The growth surpassed the previous records set in June of this year, which saw a 3.96 million site gain.

The main reason for the quick growth, Netcraft said, is the battle between Microsoft and Google to attract users to their blog services. Both firms contributed significantly to drive the Internet to a new record number of websites, which now stands at 92,615,362 websites. According to the firm, Microsoft added about 858,000 new sites, while Google gained about 568,000 during the month.

Nielsen//NetRatings announced today that 6.6 percent of the U.S. adult online population, or 9.2 million Web users, have recently downloaded an audio podcast. 4.0 percent, or 5.6 million Web users, have recently downloaded a video podcast.

These figures put the podcasting population on a par with those who publish blogs, 4.8 percent, and online daters, 3.9 percent. To put this in perspective, though, Nielsen notes that podcasting is not nearly as popular as paying bills online, 51.6 percent, or online job hunting, 24.6 percent.

"The portability of podcasts makes them especially appealing to young, on-the-go audiences," said Michael Lanz, analyst, Nielsen//NetRatings. "We can expect to see podcasting become increasingly popular as portable content media players proliferate," he continued.

Young people are more likely than their older counterparts to engage in audio or video podcasting. Web users between the ages 18 and 24 are nearly twice as likely as the average Web user to download audio podcasts, followed by users in the 25-34 and 35-44 age groups, who were also more likely than the average Web user to do audio podcasting.

"Blog entries have a different structure," Ulicny said. "They are typically short and are about something external to the blog posting itself, such as a news event. It's not uncommon for a blogger to simply state, 'I can't believe this happened,' and then link to a news story."

In this example, Ulicny said, there might not be much of interest in the blog posting, yet the fact that the blogger called attention to this story can be significant to understanding what matters.

At home broadband users are more likely to create and post user-generated content on the Web, according to the "Home Broadband Adoption 2006," a report published by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

Forty-eight million American adults have contributed some form of user-generated content on the Internet, it found. That's 35 percent of Internet users. Of those adults who have posted content on the Web, 73 percent, or 31 million, have a broadband connection at home.

"[The Web is] shifting now to user-generated content; it shows people engaging with the Internet in a number of different ways in their lives," said John Horrigan, associate director of research at Pew Internet & American Life Project. "It shows that people are pretty interested in using the technology to put something of themselves on the Internet, not just pull down information from the Internet."

Overall, 35% of all internet users have posted content to the internet.1 Specifically, we asked about four types of online content: having one's own blog; having one's own webpage; working on a blog or webpage for work or a group; or sharing selfcreated content such as a story, artwork, or video.

An even higher percentage of home broadband users - 42% or about 31 million people - have posted content to the internet. They account for 73% of home internet users who were the source of online content.

Having a fast, always-on internet connection at home is associated with users' posting content to the internet and thereby shaping the environment of cyberspace.

Although home dial-up internet users get involved in putting content online, they do not do so at the same rate as broadband users. Just 27% of dial-up users, or about 13 million adults, have placed some sort content online.

Sharing a variety of creations online is among the most popular kinds of usergenerated content. Overall, 36 million internet users have shared their own artwork, photos, stories, or videos on the internet. That comes to 26% of internet users. Home broadband users account for about two-thirds of this number.

Home is not the only place from which people upload content. Among the 11% of online Americans with access only at work or some place other than work or home (such as a library), 21% have posted some content to the internet. That comes to 5 million people.

Our survey showed that only 1% of online households in North America regularly download and listen to podcasts. And when you include all of the people who are just interested or have used podcasts, they strongly favor listening to existing content like Internet radio or broadcast radio, not necessarily new content. (And for newspapers thinking about podcasting, putting print stories into audio format just ranked ahead of original content from bloggers) I think this has something to do with 1) original content just isn't as well known; and 2) existing content benefits from users that simply want to time shift it. (Shameless plug: there's lots of other demographic and measurement data about podcasting in the brief).

The number of monthly visitors to each site rose at rates ranging from 185 percent (Citysearch) to 528 percent (Blogger.com) between February 2005 and February 2006. Their growth far exceeded the 4 percent increase in overall Internet visitors in the United States during that period.

The traffic analysis shows the Internet is still a space where new brands such as MySpace can suddenly break into the upper ranks, where older brands such as Citysearch can revive themselves after languishing for years, and where established outfits such as Google often wind up as beneficiaries because they buy or copy services pioneered by upstarts.

Google Inc., for instance, bought Blogger.com in 2003; the number of people posting or reading material at that site jumped to 15.6 million last month from 2.5 million a year ago.

"The growth in blogging reminds us the Internet is fulfilling its original promise about participation," said Gary Arlen, a research analyst and president of Arlen Communications Inc. "This medium empowers users in such a way that they can do what they want and be heard."

The Washington Post's article on the growth of traffic to community websites sent me to the bookshelf to dust off my copy of net gain by Hagel and Armstrong. It was published in 1997, a year after we started Forum One. net gain helped inspire many online community tools and services including ours, the "Forum One Index," a search engine for web forums. The Index didn't survive the bursting bubble, but Forum One did.

Now it is blogs and RSS instead of forums and "push" but the rationale is much the same -- the power of people. We're very excited to see the market catch up with the ideas and applaud the success of the new generation of community sites.

://URLFAN is an evolving experiment designed to discover what websites the blogosphere is discussing all in real time. It does this by cultivating the content of thousands of RSS feeds and parsing billions of pieces of information.

Now every website owner can see who's talking about their site in real time and how they compare to every other site on the Internet. There are many sites designed to rank the "traffic" of a website, such as Alexa, however ://URLFAN is different. We rank sites according to their popularity in the fast moving and growing world of RSS feeds.

Unlike Alexa, there is no approximating in our ranking system since we're using concrete data to generate the results. And the longer we're able to gather data the more accurate the system will become. We hope this will provide publishers with a useful tool in tracking their sites and how their content is referenced by other websites.

On the one hand, asked to rank their most frequent online activity, Americans who use the Web (now 73% of the population) placed "reading blogs" at the bottom of its list of 13 choices.

But on the other hand: blogs barely existed until recently and now fully one in five Americans say they consult blogs "frequently" or at least "occasionally." That 20% figure trails instant messaging (28%), auctions (23%), videocasts and downloading music (22%).

In terms of blog activity, there is a slight gender gap (24% of men and 17% of women read them), and of course a generation gap, with 28% of those 18 to 29 using them and only 17% of those over 50.

Awareness of RSS is quite low among Internet users. 12% of users are aware of RSS, and 4% have knowingly used RSS.

27% of Internet users consume RSS syndicated content on personalized start pages (e.g., My Yahoo!, My MSN) without knowing that RSS is the enabling technology.

28% of Internet users are aware of podcasting, but only 2% currently subscribe to podcasts.

Even tech-savvy "Aware RSS Users" prefer to access RSS feeds via user-friendly, browser based experiences (e.g., My Yahoo!, Firefox, My MSN).

In the survey, respondents who were unaware of RSS and who use a personalized start page supporting RSS feeds were asked to select the items displayed on their page. Customers who selected known RSS content feeds were categorized as "RSS Unaware users."

Clearly this issue is bigger than everyone probably is imagining, despite what David Sifry says. This must be solved now. Who besides Mark Cuban is taking the lead on this? The future of the blogosphere is at stake here. This has to be addressed at the publisher level. Does anyone care about this or is everyone busy building new features?

Bokee (formerly BlogChina) founder Fang Xingdong said yesterday that registered Bokee users same magnitude next year.had increased about fivefold this year, to about five million, and he expected an increase of the

Bokee has a 10 per cent market share in terms of user numbers and Mr. Fang expects it to break even by the end of next month.

For years Alexa has provided traffic rankings for Web sites from aarp.org to zappos.com. Then, about five years ago we created some special rules so that we could provide rankings for homepages on sites like geocities and tripod. These rules allowed people to write reviews of their favorite personal homepages, compare traffic rankings, create related links and more.

But we never created similar rules for the blog hosting sites. Sure, you could get a traffic ranking for a blog if it happened to be hosted with its own domain name -- sites like wonkette.com or kottke.org. But, if you were Attu (attu.blogspot.com) you were out of luck. The best you could get was the ranking for your host, blogspot.com, but not for your own blog.

But now that is changing: Alexa is ranking individual blogs.

Rankings of 100,000+ should be regarded as not reliable because the amount of data we receive is not statistically significant. Conversely, the more traffic a site receives (the closer it gets to the number 1 position), the more reliable its Traffic Ranking becomes.

Blog readers have plenty to choose from. Ad Age cites a blog search engine's estimate that the number of blogs is doubling about every five months. At that rate, it says, there will be one blog for each man, woman and child on Earth –- all 6.7 billion of them –- by April 2009.

Legacy Blogging preserves the treasures of our lives for ourselves, our families and the world at large. Maybe we are too close to our everyday lives to see those treasures all around us. But we know in our hearts and our guts that the most important things we pass on is our values, our life lessons and our stories, values not valuables.

34% blog to increase their visibility as an authority in their field. 32% blog to create a record of their thoughts. 20% blog to connect with others.

Those are some of the findings from a survey of 12- to 17-year-olds conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

The survey also found that older school-age girls with online access were most likely to keep a blog. About a quarter of girls, ages 15 to 17, did so, compared with 15 percent of boys in that age group.

Among adults, Pew says about 7 percent of Internet users have created their own blogs, or online diaries. And while 26 percent of adults say they read blogs, 38 percent of young people with online access said they do so.

On a per month basis, 69% of our bloggers (those who previously indicated they participate in advertising programs) earn less than $20 per month from all income sources: advertising & sponsorship. It's rather a pity that so many bloggers, of whom we have identified as being experienced, are not seeing any return for their efforts.

You can see from the graph that there is a real hurdle between $50 a month and anything above. From general experience, I know that blogs tend to go through several earnings ranges. You can be stuck on one range for a long time then jump up to the next without really experiencing a gradual incline in that direction.

MySpace.com has replaced the shopping mall, the CD store, the local Subway, as a hangout. The current generation of young people are turning to computer screens, cell phones, instant messaging, and online social networking for support and sharing common interests. In fact, it is reflective of a culture that doesn't trust big media, big business, or authority. The youngsters throwing themselves into this online culture, simply put, trust each other.

Influential, top blog authors are embedding Wikipedia links in their blog postings, exposing the site to wider audiences. A half-percent of all blog posts at BlogPulse.com, in fact, now typically cite Wikipedia.

Major news events, especially July's London subway bombings and Hurricane Katrina in August-September, boosted Wikipedia's use as a source of immediate and thorough background. As a result, Wikipedia has emerged as more reliable and timely than other encyclopedias or knowledge databases.

The rise of Consumer-Generated Media. Because Wikipedia involves thousands of collaborative authors and contributors, many of them are passionate about accuracy and focused, thoughtful usage, increasing the level of trust among users.

International appeal. Of the growing number of foreign-language Wikipedias (French, German, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Dutch & Swedish), blog citations to the German-language Wikipedia increased the most, nearly doubling in the past six months.

Blog references to Wikipedia have tripled, in fact, since Hurricane Katrina hit the U.S. Gulf Coast in late August. More than twice as many bloggers now refer to the term "Wikipedia" as they do to the traditional "encyclopedia," and bloggers mention Wikipedia six times more frequently than they mention Encyclopedia Britannica's web site.

In the survey of attitudes to blogs most of those questioned, 77%, said they thought the regularly updated web journals were a useful way to get insights into the products or services they should buy.

As many blogs were the work of individuals, many believed that they were more honest and reliable because they were not subject to the same marketing pressures as corporate or commercial websites.

"Consumers are tired of marketing gloss and so the interest in blogs is not surprising," said Paul Halfpenny, product manager at survey sponsor Hostway.

As many as half of respondents say they write a blog because it serves as a form of self-therapy. Further, one third of bloggers write about self-help and self-esteem topics. Thirty-one percent either blog or read blogs in times of need or high anxiety, while only five percent prefer to seek help from a counselor or mental health professional. The only thing more popular than blogs in times of need is seeking advice from family and friends.

The blogging population who do so for personal journaling is no surprise to AOL Community senor programming manager Joe Loong. "Knowing how I blog personally when I'm not on the clock, and how my friends blog," Loong told ClickZ Stats. "The vast majority of us are blogging about what's going on in our lives."

While there are numerous high-profile blogs that report on news and current events, only 16 percent of bloggers do so to pursue journalistic aims, 12 percent blog to break news or advance news and gossip, and eight percent blog to "expose political information".

A majority, 66 percent, don't feel pressure to update their blogs frequently, yet 65 percent pay attention to how often other bloggers post new entries to their blogs. In the casual blogging network, only 13 percent of bloggers become disappointed to learn other people's blogs attract more readers or responses.

Since the beginning of the year, traffic on image-hosting sites overall has shot up 406 percent to more than 14.7 million unique users, Nielsen/NetRatings said. The number of people using the sites represents 10 percent of the total U.S. Internet population.

The top referring sites for the top 5 photo-hosting sites were blog-hosting service providers MySpace.com, Xanga.com, LiveJournal, Blogger and Microsoft's MSN Spaces, the research firm said.

Girls between the ages of 12 and 17 were the biggest users of photo sites, accounting for 15 percent of the total number of users, Nielsen reported. Teenage girls were two-and-a-half times more likely to visit an image-hosting site than the average user.

"It's not that incredibly surprising," Gibs said of the use of photo sites by teenagers, who have been quick adopters of the "fun element of blogging."

To some extent, teens are copying celebrity-magazine photos that are surrounded by text giving a description of what's shown, Gibs said. Many teens post pictures of places they've been, as well as of themselves and friends.

At least 132 bloggers linked to that experimental blog entry, and I identified 114 of them -- for a "find" rate of 85%. It's extremely likely, however, that other unfound links exist, and the blog owners simply haven't checked back to tell me. Therefore, my actual success rate is probably closer to 80%.

Nielsen//NetRatings found that the top 50 blogging and blog-related sites grew in popularity 31 per cent to attract 29.3m unique visitors during July 2005 as compared to the beginning of this year.

Leading the way, MSN Spaces was found to be ranked number one in year-to-date unique audience growth with a 947 per cent increase on nearly 3.3m visitors in July. Fark.com and Blogger ranked second and third with 63 per cent and 45 per cent unique audience growth, respectively.

Reality Check Time: Many bloggers think their golden words influence our nation - but a new study seemingly throws ice-cold water on that idea.

Yes, blogs are satisfying to write. And, yes, some blogs have big circulations but this new info-and-(at times)-propaganda tool has a long way to go as a major molder of opinion according to a new study.

MySpace, which is particularly popular among 16- to 34-year-old fans of alternative music, has an iconoclastic edge. The prospect of being owned by one of the world's largest media conglomerates, especially one known for conservative media outlets like the Fox News Channel and The Weekly Standard, raised more than a few hackles.

"News Corp. is an awful company," wrote one user who identified himself as Rick. "Selling to Fox? What a terrible idea," wrote another user, "erinoly." And "blah blah" wrote that "These FOX peeps are control freaks that don't see past the dollar sign."

Teens now use a broader array of online content and services. E-mail is still the number one activity at 89 percent, though it slipped marginally from the 92 percent reported in 2000. Visits to entertainment Web sites (TV, music, sport and movies) were noted by 84 percent of teens (up from 83 percent in 2000). The likelihood of teens going online to play games jumped to 81 percent, up from only 66 percent in 2000. Checking online news (76 percent), purchasing online (43 percent) and getting health information (31 percent) were also up.

In comparison with adults, teen play more online games, IM more, and have a higher propensity to go online to get news on current events.

Paul Rosenfeld, the general manager of QuickBooks Online Edition, couldn't agree more.

"The customer is already talking about the corporation and its products online. Just Google the name of your product plus 'sucks' and you'll see what I mean," Rosenberg said. "You can be a part of the conversation or you can ignore it.

"We started a blog in July 2004. We believed a more authentic and uncontrived marketing message with customers would get more of their confidence," he said.

David Sifry, Technorati's chief executive officer, said three-quarters of the 9,000 corporate blogs Technorati has tracked are high-tech companies and most of the rest are related to high-tech.

"Of the non-tech blogs, they are mostly public-relations companies, marketing consultancies and real estate," he said.

The variation among these feeds is significant. The most popular is Slashdot, with 37,400 active subscribers. Meanwhile, sites with only 1 current subscriber include Haag's Pop Podium and Justin's Guide to Everything, where the only subscriber is me. I have no idea who Justin is but thought he would appreciate the audience. (Maybe people will start a new game called Bloglineswhacking to find feeds with only one subscriber?)

It's also interesting to note that these feeds are very prolific and getting more so everyday: In June we surpassed 500 million articles in the Bloglines feed index, and in the next few days we'll cross the 600 million mark. We're adding more than 2 million new articles every day. There's no question that the blogosphere and other sources of feed content are the fastest growing segment of new content on the web.

They found all sorts of interesting stuff - Charlie's main takeaway was that blog readers are remarkably similar in profile to early internet users... But here was the shocker for me...

They asked those individuals whom they had observed visiting blog sites the same question as I listed above, and 13% answered (e)!!! 13% of the people trafficking blog sites had never heard of blogs. Even more astounding, a full 50% of the individuals answered c) or d)!

That means that almost 2/3 of blog readers don't realize they are reading a blog. It is a fairly common theory amongst folks analyzing the blogosphere that blog readership is underreported in surveys - but Charlie's team found a way to quantify that with staggering results.

No participant understood the mechanisms associated with RSS/subscribing to a blog -- not even the minority familiar with the term "RSS."

Few participants even recognized that they were on an actual blog -- and once they did, had a very different reaction to the information presented.

A minority of participants understood how to navigate within the blog itself -- with most being confused by areas for recent posts, categories, trackbacks and even the comments and archives functions.

Catalyst's conclusions: broad comprehension is fairly far away – and better design and terminology are essential. All those tested were optimistic about blogs following the test, with many expressing interest or enthusiasm for what had been a new experience. However, few felt that the presentation of functionality and navigation was intuitive, and many wondered why more effort had not been put into education.

Whoever figures out how to communicate these terms, clearly and intuitively, to the hundreds of millions of Websurfers who don't blog stands to make a mint.

The gain of 2.76 million hostnames from June is the second-largest monthly increase in the history of our survey, as 2005 continues to shape up as a historic year for Internet growth. The only larger gain was a 3.3 million hostname increase in March 2003, which ended months of stagnation and kicked off 30 consecutive months of positive growth for the Web.