ABSTRACT
Previously the preserve of a few enthusiasts, blogging (weblogging) is increasingly becoming a mainstream activity of the digital age. In refining their model of blog populations, Perseus Development Corporation estimates that as many as 31.6 million weblogs “have been created on services such as BlogSpot, Livejournal, Xanga and MSN Spaces, with 10 million created in the first quarter of 2005 alone” (Henning, 2005, n.p.). The corporation’s previous study found that up to 66% of the blogs have been either temporarily or permanently abandoned (Henning, 2003). Therefore, their 31.6 million is both an underestimate of the population of blogs available online, because there is no reliable count of blogs available outside of the hosted sites, and an overestimate, because there is no accounting for inactive blogs and as many as 20.8 million of the blogs included in their study may be abandoned, potentially leaving 10.7 million active sites on the listed hosts.
