Blog Readership Near Mainstream Status

With 50 million US-based readers in the first quarter of 2005, blogs have moved beyond a simple self-publishing niche.

The comScore Networks report for August 2005 says blogs now reach 50 million Americans. Over 19 million visit sites hosted on Google’s Blogspot.com domain, where users create blogs with the Blogger software Google acquired when it purchased Pyra Labs.

Politics and news dominate the top of comScore’s rankings. They list freerepublic.com with the most unique first-quarter visitors at 3.6 million. For total visits, drudgereport.com picked up over 44 million; that site also placed second in unique visitors, with 2.2 million.

For SEMs following blog traffic, political and news blogs ranked atop the seven blog categories in the study. Forty-three percent of blog visitors went to blogs in that category alone. 18 percent visited ones comScore placed in the “hipster” category, while 16 percent looked in on tech blogs.

“Blogspot.com now reaches more visitors than NYTimes.com, USAToday.com and WashingtonPost.com — clear evidence that consumer-generated media can draw audience on par with traditional online publishers,” the report notes.

David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business. Email him here.