Technorati will be releasing its State of the Blogosphere 2009 report in five consecutive daily segments this year. The first segment, out today, reveals who the bloggers are - the answers hopefully won't surprise you. Reading through the report, I got the sense that while one could certainly categorize bloggers in the specific way Technorati did, there is a lot of room for variance here - hopefully there will be some more serious discussion as the rest of the report unfolds.
Hobbyists: Representing 72% of the blogosphere, hobbyists say that they blog for fun and don't make any money from their blogging. Hobbyists say they blog to express their "personal musings" (53%). 71% update at least weekly, while 22% update daily. 76% blog to speak their minds, their main success metric is personal satisfaction (76%).
Part-Timers: The next largest group, part-timers (15%) say they "blog to supplement their income, but don't consider it a full time job." 75% of them blog to share their expertise, while 72% blog to attract new clients for their business. 61% say that they measure the success of their blog by the unique pageviews they attract, 60% say they also value personal satisfaction.
Self-Employeds: At 9% of respondents, self-employeds "blog full time for their own company or organization," and 10% do report blogging 40 hours per week or more. 22% say that their blog is their company, while 70% say they own a company and blog about their business. Self-employeds also value page views (63%) over personal satisfaction (53%) as a success metric, and 53% are blogging more than when they started. Finally, in a demographic (bloggers) awash with Twitter users, self-employeds are the Tweetiest of them all - 88% say they use the service.
Pros: Representing just 4% of respondents, pros say they "blog full-time for a company or organization" - though actually very few of them actually report spending a full 40 hours per week blogging. 46% are blogging more than they did when they started. 70% blog to share expertise; 53% blog to attract new clients for the business they work for. Accordingly, pageviews are the most important success metric for pros, valued by 69%, compared to 53% for personal satisfaction.
I'd like to take a second to speak to those that consider themselves pro bloggers - if you're blogging for personal satisfaction and not pageviews or, pardon my capitalist mindset, revenue - then you're a hobbyist. Let's hope the rest of the report is more revealing of the state of the blogosphere.