The BBC has reported on a number of tech predictions made by Gartner. These include a prediction that the number of blogs will level off at 100 million next year, up from an estimated 57 million blogs at present. “Gartner analyst Daryl Plummer said the reason for the levelling off in blogging was due to the fact that most people who would ever start a web blog had already done so.”
Perhaps they are right. After all, 100 million is a lot of blogs. However there are some factors that I could see causing a continued increase. The bulk of on line activity still comes from a relatively small percent of the population. While most who are interested might have blogs by next year, I could see this causing a decrease in number of new blogs but there may also be a number who gradually get hooked. The 2008 elections could get a whole new group interested in political blogging. Other things will happen which will attract others to blogging. The increased ease of setting up free or inexpensive blogs might also attract more people, as well as encouraging some bloggers to set up mulitple blogs to represent different interests. Not all blogs are like Liberal Values, mixing posts on politics, the culture wars, and Gilmore Girls on the same day.
Even if the number of bloggers isn’t increased due to new people getting interested, there’s also the increasing number of spam blogs. While the number of real blogs may level off, if spam blogs are like any other type of spam they will continue to increase.