Thursday, July 20, 2006

Female Bloggers: Rumoured Existence Confirmed

Hurrah, someone has finally done a survey of bloggers (in the US), and discovered that 46% of America's 12 million bloggers are women.

Blogworld pundits can download the full survey (33-page PDF) here.

Many thanks to Tom L for the top tip-off.

20 comments:

rockmother said...

Oo I'm first. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it Mary! I think you hsould forward it to her. Hope all well and not too stressful.

Konrad said...

So: I'm on the 54% side. But of course I like to look to you girls!!! Konrad

Tabby Rabbit said...

That wasn't a very long break. Then again, for you and online perhaps it was...

patroclus said...

I know, sorry. I have a dreadful habit of doing the complete opposite of whatever I say I'm going to do. Or not going to do.

Sean McManus said...

Now you've created this expectation, does this mean that you do the opposite of 'doing the opposite of what you say you're going to do' and so do 'what you say you're going to do'? Paradox police, we have a suspect!

Molly Bloom said...

We female bloggers rock! I'm glad you didn't go awayxx

James Henry said...

I think those 46% should be referred as 'ladyblogs', so we can keep track.

Billy said...

I'm pleased all of those female bloggers weren't figments of my imagination...

Well you never know.

rockmother said...

Some of the 46% could be men blogging as women and vice versa - how could they undeniably prove those figures I wonder?

patroclus said...

RM - haha, 'undeniably prove'. I like that. Basically they interviewed 7,000-odd people, found that some of them keep a blog, and then interviewed 233 of the bloggers by phone, to discover that 107 of them are women. Of course anyone could have been lying at any point, and 233 isn't the biggest sample out of a nation of 295 million people, but hey, that's the way dodgy surveys work. Next thing you know, it's reported in the media as true fact.

Incidentally, yesterday the Metro reported that there are 12 million bloggers in Britain (that's one in every five people), and the Guardian reported that there are seven million bloggers in Britain. Both of them claimed to have got their figures from the SAME survey, conducted by MSN. Never trust any statistics you read in the papers, especially if the survey has been conducted or 'sponsored' by someone with a vested interest in the results.

Interestingly, though, the female bloggers in my blogroll represent an exact 46% of the total number of bloggers I link to. Spooky, eh?

Betty said...

Okay, it's time for some of the 46 per cent of "lady" bloggers to admit that they aren't in fact "ladies".

Well, I'm confessing, anyway.

Cheers mate, I'm off for a shave now,

"Betty", aka Bert

Tim F said...

But how many of the lady bloggers restrict their observations to childcare and/or gynaecology?

Tim F said...

Apparently the Daily Star has the figure at three million. Do you reckon if the story runs into the weekend, the entire UK blogverse will consist of you, me and someone who's really into crochet?

James Henry said...

So are they working on the 'one blog = one blogger' theory? Spam blogs aside, the average teenage would seem to have at least five different blogs at any one time...

Tim F said...

Does a MySpace page count as a blog? Non-Murdoch media might have a vested interest in excluding them from their calculations.

patroclus said...

Blogging 'Was All A Dream', Finds New Survey

Anonymous said...

I must admit, i was relieved to read these statistics and find that it is possible that I am real after all. I was having a terrible existential crisis.

LC said...

Pffff... You can prove anything with statistics. "Female Bloggers" indeed! I don't believe a word of it.

For a start, setting up a blog is an extremely technical process which involves knowing exactly which buttons to press on what we scientists call a 'computer' and women simply lack the capacity to perform such a task.

I mean, perhaps it might be concievable that a woman may be consulted on which colour scheme to use for a blog, but other than that I can't really see women getting involved in blogging.

DavetheF said...

Mary must be feeling a right charlie now. Oo-er!

Fraudulent Little Tart said...

Interestingly, on page iii, it says that '56% of bloggers spend extra time trying to verify facts they want to include in a post'. I feel Mary could learn a lesson or two from us bloggers (and not just how to use the damn shift key).