How we blog

More women blog than men, and men are more likely to abandon the blogs they do start. Those are among the interesting findings in a study by Perseus Development Corp. that surveyed eight of the most popular blog-hosting services.

According to Perseus, most blogs are updated much less frequently than is generally thought: the average is once every 14 days. The majority are written for what Perseus labels nanoaudiences of known associates. The "typical blog is written by a teenage girl who uses it twice a month to update her friends and classmates on happenings in her life." (She also tends to type everything in lowercase, using capitals FOR EMPHASIS ONLY.)

The study also found evidence that blogging is not for everyone after all:

The most dramatic finding was that 66.0% of surveyed blogs had not been updated in two months, representing 2.72 million blogs that have been either permanently or temporarily abandoned. Apparently the blog-hosting services have made it so easy to create a blog that many tire-kickers feel no commitment to continuing the blog they initiate. In fact, 1.09 million blogs were one-day wonders, with no postings on subsequent days. The average duration of the remaining 1.63 million abandoned blogs was 126 days (almost four months). A surprising 132,000 blogs were abandoned after being maintained a year or more (the oldest abandoned blog surveyed had been maintained for 923 days).

Males were more likely than females to abandon blogs, with 46.4% of abandoned blogs created by males, as compared to 40.7% of active blogs being created by males. Abandonment rates did not vary based on age. Those who abandoned blogs tended to write posts that were only 58% as long as the posts of those who still maintained blogs, which simply indicates that those who enjoy writing stick with blogs longer.

The research isn't exactly new: Many of the numbers and conclusions were originally noted in an Oct. 4, 2003, press release. But a number of bloggers are commenting on it today. Steve Shu, for one, frames Perseus' conclusions in the context of how the blogging scene has evolved in 2004.