Has Blogging Peaked?

One of the many impressive presentations during the Healthcare Blogging Summit in Washington DC on Monday was by Steve Rubel.

He made a number of important points. One was that he predicted that blog post volume has peaked. He pointed to the most recent Technorati report on The State of the Blogosphere. There is indeed a small dip in their post volume graph, but as he pointed out, we need more data than that to be sure. As I was walking though the airport on my way home I saw an advertisement about the growth of the internet in China. Perhaps there is some slowing in English language posting, but Paul Walker also made the point that blogging in China is only in its early stages and China’s blog and post volumes may led to an overall increase in global blogging.

I have just seen that the BBC is carrying an article entitled, "Blogging 'set to peak next year," based on  a wide-ranging report from Gartner.

The analysts say that during the middle of next year the number of blogs will level out at about 100 million and that 200 million people have already stopped writing their blogs. Technorati is tracking more than 57 million blogs, of which it believes around 55% are "active" and updated at least every three months.

It may well be that everyone who is going to blog has already started, and that  many  people will move on to something new. But I am going to make a prediction that the power of blogs is actually going to increase. Many of the early adopters used blogs like diaries: highly personal and mostly ephemeral. That has gradually been changing as people in business, experts and such disparate groups as whistle blowers and independent reporters have grasped what we can do with blogs.

I was initially surprised to see a study by Fard Johnmar which indicated that 40% of healthcare bloggers to it anonymously, until I realized how valuable they are: many are likely to be spreading information that would at one time have been unavailabe to most of us.

In July I wrote a piece about blogging and the tipping point. Everything that I have seen in the last six months convinces me that the blogosphere is gradually changing, maturing and gaining greater depth and strength. So even if we are left with a measly 100,000,000 bloggers, I think that they have the power to change the world forever.

In Healing, Meaning and Purpose I pointed out that the Age of Enlightenment was the child of no more than 1,000 people. And one of the most striking things at the conference on Monday was that we had men and women of every ethnic, political and philosophical stripe, yet they were all talking about how blogging could represent an important opportunity for improving the world.

When I see such a diverse group of knowledgeable and intelligent people talking in those tones, I feel cautiously optimistic about the future.