WebProNews

According to a study performed at UMBC eBiquity Research Group at the University of Maryland, nearly three out of every four pings to blog ping servers are from splogs - or what they're calling spings!

They also found that more than 50% of claimed blogs pinging weblogs.com are splogs. UMBC is also kindly providing hourly updated blogs vs. splog sping statistics on their Web site. Here's a snapshot that shows just how big the splog problem is.

Clearly this issue is bigger than everyone probably is imagining, despite what David Sifry says. This must be solved now. Who besides Mark Cuban is taking the lead on this? The future of the blogosphere is at stake here. This has to be addressed at the publisher level. Does anyone care about this or is everyone busy building new features?

Steve Rubel is a PR strategist with nearly 16 years of public relations, marketing, journalism and communications experience. He currently serves as a Senior Vice President with Edelman, the largest independent global PR firm.He authors the Micro Persuasion weblog, which tracks how blogs and participatory journalism are changing the public relations practice.