Technorati, the recognized authority on what's going on in the blogosphere, offers the state of the World Live Web, measuring up the growth, evolution, and the significance of blogs and other social media. One of the highlights of the state of the blogosphere report is the increasing number of blogs that are entering the list of most popular websites.

How many blogs are created?

Mainstream media remain more popular than blog sites. But blogs are rapidly catching up: there are currently 70 million blogs (twice as many compared to the number of blogs in the previous year), which means around 120,000 new blogs are created everyday, or 1.4 new weblogs each second. In addition, blogs are beginning to take over spots in the list of the popular websites today.

One estimate shows that more than 20% of the most popular websites in the world today are blogs. Another estimate puts the figure at 25%. According to Technorati, during the fourth quarter of 2007, 22 blogs were included in the list of the top 100 most popular websites. This figure is a significant improvement compared to the number in the previous quarter. In the third quarter of 2006, Technorati revealed that there were only 12 blogs included in the elite group of most popular websites in the world.

These figures are a clear evidence of the unstoppable surge of blogs. David Sifry, Technorati's founder and CEO, said that they also suggest the constant maturation of the blogosphere. He writes in his blog: "Blogs continue to become more and more viable news and information outlets. For instance, information not shown in our data but revealed in our own user testing in Q1 2007 indicates that the audience is less and less likely to distinguish a blog from, say, nytimes.com -- for a growing base of users, these are all sites for news, information, entertainment, gossip, etc. and not 'blog' or a 'MSM site'."

Seizing the opportunity

Now that you know that blogs are becoming more and more popular, you have to accept the fact that blogs are not just a short-lived phenomenon occurring far from the center of the WWW. Many major companies such as Forbes, Fords, Hewlett-Packard, and Dell (to name just a few) promote and have their PR activities using their business blogs. Majority of the consulting firms also maintain blogs that are dedicated to their fields. Likewise, nearly all television networks and newspapers manage and publish blogs with the help of their journalists and other employees. For example, go to cnn.com anytime and you'll see a link to a blog.

Why do firms and media organizations maintain blogs (business and non-business) when they already have decent websites? One of the reasons is that blogs helps you in building communities around your business. It also draws your clients and customers closer to you. Another great reason you should put up a blog for your business is that it can be a very useful PR tool. It is much easier to encourage Internet users to link to your blog posts. In addition to getting immediate feedback through your business blog, it also allows you to make yourself an authority in your field.