Michelle Malkin [1] asks that question, and it’s kind of an extension of the post from yesterday [2] on more or less the same topic.
She quotes a WSJ bit [3]that suggests:
“Some eight million Americans now publish blogs and 32 million people read them, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project.”
She doesn’t believe it, and links to a Powerline post by Hindrocket [4], who also doesn’t believe it.
First I don’t trust the Pew research group; they’ve been too wrong too often in the past to take seriously on any matter, far less one that is this technical and complex. That said, Michelle points up, correctly, that part of the problem in the numbers, is the way Bloggers tend to blur the line between the number of visits and the number of visitors.
What she fails to mention is that most bloggers don’t have the kind of hit count tools to hand that some of the A-level folks (Such as Michelle and Powerline) do. (Though in fairness she points to the way Sitemeter, which I use here, as being problematic.)
Another point that gets missed here is reads from ATOM/XML, Bloglines, and so on, that bypass the usual hitcounter tools.
No, nobody’s really gotten their arms around this, yet.