A report released by PEW Internet earlier this month shows a downward trend in blogging for teens and young adults and an upward trend for those of us 30 and older. The report credits use of social network sites as a possible reason to drop in macro blogging by teens and young adults.
- In December 2007, 24% of online 18-29 year olds reported blogging,
compared with 7% of those thirty and older.
- By 2009, just 15% of
internet users ages 18-29 maintain a blog—a nine percentage point drop
in two years. However, 11% of internet users ages thirty and older now
maintain a personal blog.
-PEW
Internet
|
I can't help but wonder what this means for business in the decades to come. As these teens and young adults and grow to take authoritative positions within organizations, will we see a decline in corporate blogging in preference for micro-blogging on social networks? Clearly businesses are taking advantage of the social networking platforms already and there is already a subset of 'social networking' agencies to help them do it. However here at the fishbowl we still build 'macro' blogs for organizations everyday and almost every web discovery meeting we have starts with 'we need a blog'. Of course we work with clients to setup and maintain a presence on Twitter, Facebook and other networks as well. These stats focus on personal blogging, but as blogging, facebook and Twitter all started as personal tools, the trends do tend to spread to the commercial sector over time.
Posted on
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
by Shane Larrabee