No offence meant. This story makes me wish I lived in Canada, basically.
Canada has the highest number of blog readers per internet-head of any of the countries measured in recent comScore research conducted in North America and Western Europe. The US is surprisingly low compared to its neighbour, lower than any countries but Italy and Germany.
What is that about? Does the US have a less centralised population? Are there fewer people (per capita) in the US involved in IT? I reckon both could be true. But it’s also about the status of the print IT press, I think. Both Italy and Germany — the lowest scorers on blogs — have an enormous IT press that is well trusted, from my own experience talking to journalists from those countries and visiting their newsagents. I also know that the UK has a shrinking, yet well-trusted IT press. Following this line of argument, the US would also have a well-trusted print IT press.
The equation then becomes that penetration of blogs is in inverse proportion to the trust and penetration of mainstream print media. Common sense, I guess. Would any Canadians like to comment on these results?
Via. micropersuasion. This piece updated from an earlier version where I didn’t say what I thought I said.
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I can believe the first chart but a big eyebrow goes up at the second that lists Windows Live owning the top blog site spot in Canada.
I can’t think of a single blog that I’m subscribed to that operates on that site (and as the first chart indicates, there’s a lot of ‘em).
Anecdotally there’s still a lot of Blogger powered sites but a healthy representation of Blogware and Word Press amongst others.
It’s really hard to judge from anecdotal evidence, or what we see our fiends use.
If it was down to that then MySpace, bebo etc. would be nowhere as far as my own personal network is concerned. yet I’m pretty confident both those sites do OK.
It would be great to see some independent research on blog platforms. comScore normally seem pretty good, but I would agree that no typepad or wordpress doesn’t match up to experience.
I wonder if Vernon Lun has some idea — very small sample, but interesting, nonetheless.
Ian — totally agree re: anecdotal just seems odd that it would essentially be invisible. The one Live spaces blog recently I’ve seen was this AM and it was by someone who works for MS.
I wonder if it comes down to a personal/professional mix again as your International blogging post the other day illustrated. I largely use blogs for professional / business oriented topics rather then personal so my subscriptions are heavily skewed that way as well.
MySpace is a good example as it’s something I almost never encounter (thank god.)
I think the *only* Live Spaces blog I’ve read, ever, is Maryam Scoble’s. But, you know, I’ve also heard bold claims about the growth rate of that platform.
I’ve pinged Dr. Lun to see what he says.
Lies, damn lies, I tell you!
To be fair, TheGoodBlogs statistics may not be truly representative of what’s out there since our sample is still relatively small. However for what it’s worth, in terms of absolute visits, US (64%), Canada (18.5%), UK (4.88%), Germany (1.94%), France (1.75%), Australia (1.46%), India (1%) and the rest is less than 1%.
What does seem to correlate though is if I apply the absolute numbers against the number of internet users per country (obtained on http://www.internetworldstats.com), it shows me that Canadians with Internet access is almost 2.5 times more likely to visit blogs than their US counterparts. I found nothing to that substantiate the other countries like Spain etc.
Anecdotally, (tongue-in-cheek of course) I think it means that the US have better alternative channels of entertainment like better cable and satellite TV, more online shopping opportunities, better shopping malls and recreational distractions than us poor sods up north! We rely on keeping each other company online when we’re snowed in and frequent blogs in the hope that someone will be our friend!
Back on a serious note, the second table is probably way off, especially the bias towards Live Spaces, in our 6 months at TGB we have yet to come across any blogger joining using Live Spaces, it may be true if you were looking at the social networking angle but then you need to throw MySpace etc into the mix.
You’ve inspired me to write a book called ‘The Blog Next Door’
That’s great corroboration of the ‘more Canadians’ idea. You lot do seem to be all over the place!
On the platforms. Yeah. I wonder if the research was maybe conducted through MS and Google to result in the big numbers for Live Spaces and Blogger.
I would have a tendency to agree with Vernon, Ian. My theory would be that there’s just so much content and so many sources of content in the U.S. when compared with Canada that Canadians may be more likely to turn to blogs — and it’s also possible that lots of Canadians online feel overwhelmed by U.S. media as well, and are looking for alternative sources of content and information. Hard to say for sure, of course.
News media is pretty diabolical in Canada. It’s one of the reasons that I’m reluctant to move back there.
Is Windows Live benefiting from family photo-sharing?
I must agree about the poor state of Canadian media. I live in a city (Vancouver) in which three of the daily newspapers are owned by a single company. The fourth, The Globe and Mail, is somewhat better, but nevertheless so inadequate that I have neglected to reactivate my subscription following a recent move.
I wouldn’t claim this applies to anyone else, but I think I’m better off not reading the newspaper, listening to the radio, or watching TV news. That time is better spent reading books and blogs. They and The Economist fill me in on important happenings.
For what it’s worth, I believe Canada’s population is more concentrated (almost all in the south) and more urban (over 80%, however that’s measured).
In a study I read some time ago (can’t remember where or when) it noted that those who live in colder climes tend to be more connected “Internettedly” :) like Finland, Sweden and Norway.
So, I’m not surprised about Canada. For the US, one would have to break it up by states, really. The south I presume would be very low with the East and West Coasts on par with any of the higher numbers here.
Back on a serious note, the second table is probably way off, especially the bias towards Live Spaces, in our 6 months at TGB we have yet to come across any blogger joining using Live Spaces, it may be true if you were looking at the social networking angle but then you need to throw MySpace etc into the mix.