New TrendsThe area of blogs or blogging has seen incredible increases over the last few years. 75,000 new blogs appear every day, joining the already 35,000,000 that are currently online. Blogs are some of the most up to date and dynamic entities online. Every hour, there are 50,000 new articles or posts added to blogs; there are 1.2 million snippets of new information added every day. Technorati tracks over 35 million blogs and 2.3 billion links with its blog search engine. The blogosphere is now sixty times bigger than it was in 2003,
now attracting over 50million readers. It is estimated that in 2006, US workers will spend the equivalent of 551,000 years reading blogs at work.Blog Marketing and Retail ConsumersWe already know that 88% of 18-29yr olds, and 84% of 30-49yr olds go online to research products and to begin the buying process. Over 30% of these potential buyers also read blogs on a regular basis, turning to a new generation of search engines like Technorati, Feedster, Icerocket and Webdigger for information, and also seeking new content on the blog engines of Yahoo, Google and MSN. The information found on blogs can heavily influence buying decisions. Some people see blogs as being unbiased or impartial, while others have no idea that they are even on a blog, and view blogs the same as traditional websites.
Online retailers who do not have blogs, simply do not have access to this large and constantly expanding market.