Will Blogging Plateau ?!

I once heard a prominent French web 2.0 afficionado claim on TV "one day, everyone will have a blog...". He wasn't kidding, he truly believed it ! 

I expressed at the time my disagreement with such a vision. Blogging is definetly a great thing, almost a revolution, no question, but this being said, let's be realistic for a while : very few people really want to publicly express something, let alone the interest of others to read it. 

Enough may be enough. Analysts at the research and consulting firm Gartner Group believe that by next summer there will be 100 million people with blogs, and that will be it.

Discussing the firm's annual package of "Predicts," Daryl Plummer, the managing vice president, said growth will plateau because after five years or so, anybody who wanted a blog already has one. This has significance for companies such as Six Apart Inc. which sell blogging software and hosting services.

Gartner estimates that only 2% of all Internet users are frequent contributors to blogs, and that 10-15% post occasionally, while 50% just watch or read.

Plummer said, "A lot of people have been in and out of this thing." Starting a blog is easy, maintaining it is hard. "Everyone thinks they have something to say, until they're put on stage and asked to say it," Plummer added.

As for me, I don't know if next year it will plateau, but for sure I don't believe a single second that more than 20-25% of the adult population will one day have a blog. Sure, many teenagers in France have a skyblog, like teenagers in the US have a MySpace profile, but that's just for the fun of it ! Will they continue to have one once their get mature ? I seriously doubt it !

Comments

[Ludovic]

Tout a fait d'accord sur le fait que cela ne va pas durer. Les jeunes créent un blog car cela est un effet de mode et que le copain en a un. A present, cela va diminuer au fil du temps pour etre remplacer par de nouvelles techniques, comme du contenu plus interactif.

c u
Ludovic

[Paul]

Hi Michel

I agree with Ludovic above, like most new technological advancements (and particularly on the net), they'll be replaced by the next technological advancement (eg video blogging directly from mobile phone...or something we dont even know about yet).

I think we'll soon be getting to the information overload point when "too many blogs will destroy the whole concept of blogs"

Paul

[Ludovic]

Paul,

I think we've already reached that point for the overload. New technology such as video blogging have been there for few years now and new concepts (eg online personal TV) will increase in popularity ... and surely even more things.

c u
Ludovic