Welcome to the Party

I had a conversation recently with a reader who visits my site primarily for my columns and related posts.” He noted that when he starts surfing the blogosphere, he kind of feels like “the guy who arrives at a cocktail party 90 minutes late.”

I take his point. One of the things bloggers constantly fault the mainstream media for is insulating itself from the outside world. Although I don’t believe that the bloggers do that when it comes to gathering information, we bloggers may as a “community” be rightfully accused at times of becoming close-knit just short of inbreeding.

The Pew Study, The State of Blogging, has an interesting chart that shows blog creation increasing at rate of about 6 to 7 percent; however blog readership is increasing at a rate of 26-27 percent. While the trend line for “Blog Creators” is rising, the trend line for “Blog Readers” is increasing far more rapidly.

What I take that to mean is that the days are coming to an end when one builds traffic and garners one’s readership primarily from other bloggers through “promiscuous linking.” The blogosphere is no longer simply a community of shared interest in blogging. It’s developing a real constituency, and in (gasp) mainstream media terms, its share of the information-seeking market is going to be primarily non-bloggers.

One can’t draw those people in to the festivities unless one occasionally glances over and approaches that lost-looking guy contemplating the cheese tray and takes him around for introductions. Our your posts “non-user” friendly?

Just a thought.