It was only six months ago that Gabe Rivera asked Is blog search big?, partially in response to my wondering whether we’re swimming in the mainstream yet.
Today, Scott Karp riffed on the Gallup poll which points out that the audience for blogs is relatively flat.
Blogging and the Elusive Mass Audience, which really should have been titled from this sentence in his post: “Is it possible that bloggers are the only people who read blogs?”
If there are more people blogging, but no increase in the number of people reading blogs, maybe blog readership has actually been siphoned off by blog writing. I know that the time I spend writing this post is time I might otherwise spend reading other blogs.
Yes, it’s either create or consume. The best at the former either limit their time spent doing the latter or just have more time than I can imagine!
Returning to the original metric about the mainstream, though, the top searches on Technorati this hour are more in the mainstream right now (just before 10pm PT on February 12, 2006). Only three technology topics in there by my count (#9, #12, and #15).
- “Mohammed Cartoon”
- Cheney
- “Dick Cheney”
- Krugle
- Cartoon
- Olympic
- “Michelle Kwan”
- Alicia Machado
- Fon
- Blizzard
- Snow
- Iran
- Gmail
- “Du Bist Deutschl…”
- Zillow
I know I’m not in the mainstream. The blogs I read probably are not, either.