Blogworld Expo 2008 - Keynote by Richard Jalichandra of Technorati

Richard went through an enormous number of statistics that Technorati has been collecting for some time along with personal discussions they have had with some of the top bloggers. Technorati will be publishing their findings starting Monday at their site. Here are my notes from that session.

• Forget about using the word "consumer" – people are now producers of content.
• Centralization is dead, fragmentation rules. Man, my organization is going in the opposite direction in terms of management style. It will be interesting to see the cultures clash.
• Richard went through a list of Web 2.0 platforms and their role in the world. Social networking is all about sharing and communicating. Online journals are about sharing and life casting. Blogs are for information and influence.
• Blogs are media!
• One study said that there are 80 million unique visitors in the US going to blogs. A different study by eMarketer says it’s 94 million.
• 4 of the top 10 entertainment sites are blogs.
• Larger blogs are taking on the characteristic of the mainstream media. The Huffington Post is an example of this. Meanwhile, the mainstream media are creating their own blogs. Blog trends, stories and behaviors are influencing the MSM. You can take a look a the way Sarah Palin has been savaged in the press through rumors and innuendos started on blogs as an example.
• Most bloggers are male, most are young, most are affluent and most are educated. How those sets overlap was not shown.
• Blogging is all over the country. It is not localized to major metropolitan areas. It is also International. Interestingly, most bloggers publish in English. This could drive English even more as the global language.
• When they asked bloggers to categorize their blogs by subject area, 43% fit into the "other" category. When asked, they said their niche was so fine that it didn’t fit into a category. That sounds like an army of experts instead of an Army of Davids.
• Most people blog to share their opinions and expertise.
• 71% of the top 100 bloggers use tags. OK, OK, I get the message. I'll start using tags!
• The big bloggers write often as well, typically several times a day.
• The big bloggers know their external tools and use them. Bloggers are also active web20 users. They comment, subscribe to rss feeds, watch videos on line and so forth. None of this is surprising, since we live a considerable portion of our lives online.
• Brands permeate the blogosphere. Lots of brand reviews and blogging about brands. This is why you need to monitor the blogs to see what people are saying about your brands. Your brand is in the blogosphere whether you like it or not. You can’t control the media, but you can engage in the conversation.
• And now the same message as every other talk - Be authentic and be transparent!
• You can’t just hide out on your own blog, you’ve got to participate across the blogosphere.

Richard Jalichandra