Pingdom, a service that monitors servers and web sites, has gathered some stats on the top 100 blogs (of some 157 million they estimate to be out there. Take a sip of your morning latte and reflect on that 157 million number a moment!; there are even five or six with the same name as this one.)
By their number crunching, the average age of a blog reader is 38. (By comparison, average age of somebody who watches broadcast TV is 51). The newspaper average is somewhere around 55, and print readership is declining of course.
Pingdom is surprised by the relatively old age of the average blog reader, although I wonder if the hidden variable is the fact that the overall population of regions where people read a lot of blogs, such as the U.S., is an important factor. Still some interesting points, and I’m abashed by how few of the top 100 blogs I read: only three, Gizmodo, Ars Technica and Laughing Squid, and only the last one regularly. A bunch are NYTimes ones, and I read it every day, without much paying attention to whether I’m on a blog brand or just the site. I wonder if Ars Technica is happy or unhappy about having “no reader over 64.” And if that’s really even true, not one, ever?
A Few Reasonable Words 