Profile of a Blogger

Fernanda Viegas, a PhD candidate at MIT's Media Lab (Sociable Media Group) has completed a survey on the demographics of the "typical" blogger. As his findings conclude:

Formerly viewed as a marginal activity restricted to the technically savvy, blogging is slowly becoming more of a mainstream phenomenon on the Internet. Thanks to much media hype and some high profile blog sites, these online journals have captured the public's imagination. As novice authors plunge into the thrilling world of blog publishing, they soon realize that publicly writing about one's life and interests is not as simple as it might seem at first. As they become prolific writers, more bloggers find themselves having to deal with issues of privacy and liability. Accounts of bloggers either hurting friends' feelings or losing jobs because of materials published on their sites are becoming more frequent.

Source: Fernanda Viegas, "Blog Survey: Expectations of Privacy and Accountability" via GetReal

I had a conversation on this topic a few nights ago as I explained some of the motivations for the blogging system I was designing. One of my main assumptions in the development of the blogging application was that a tidal wave of activity was on the horizon. The force behind that movement - entrepreneurs. While the inital wave of bloggers were tech-savvy individuals, followed by a smaller burst from individuals and increasingly teens and young adults, the next rising will see business people reaching out to these technologies for a number of reasons, least of which being a creative mix of editorial and sales content.