stories

Exponential Blog Subscriber Growth

I plotted the numbers of subscribers to the popular SlashDot blog:

date subscribers log(subscr.)
jul-03 ------- 1 ------- 0,00
aug-03------23 -------1,36
sep-03 ----- 47 ------- 1,67
okt-03 -----105 ------- 2,02
nov-03 ---- 142 ------- 2,15
dec-03 -----205 ------- 2,31
jan-04 -----321 -------- 2,51
feb-04 ---- 463 -------- 2,67
mrt-04 ---- 654 -------- 2,82
28-3 -------842 -------- 2,93

This is indeed exponential growth with 1000 subscribers expected in may-04,
10.000 in nov-04, and 100.000 in june next year.
Then, indeed blogs would be a medium of importance.

Let us see whether my predictions will come true

extrapolated:
date subscr. log(subcr.) growth(log)
may-04----------1,189------3,08-------0,15
jun-04-----------1,680------3,23-------0,15
jul-04-----------2,373-------3,38-------0,15
aug-04----------3,352------3,53-------0,15
sep-04----------4,734------3,68-------0,15
oct-04-----------6,688------3,83-------0,15
nov-04----------9,447------3,98-------0,15
dec-04---------13,344------4,13-------0,15
jan-05---------18,850------4,28-------0,15
feb-05---------26,626------4,43-------0,15
mar-05--------37,610------4,58-------0,15
apr-05---------53,126------4,73-------0,15
may-05-------75,043-------4,88-------0,15
jun-05-------106,001-------5,03-------0,15

At a certain moment, saturation will have to set in. When will that be?

Any comments on these extrapolations are welcome.
Does anyone know of subscriber data over longer periods?

blogging for the few

Today I counted the number of subscribers to a list of weblogs listed as Most Popular Blogs for 3/26/2004
on Bloglines.com. It is interesting to see that even the popular blogs attract only hundreds of subscribers. Compared to e.g. magazines or radio and television channels that is peanuts.

Blog --------------------- Description --- subscribers
Bloglines ---------------- News -------------------------undisclosed
Slashdot ---------------- News for nerds --------------842 subscribers
Wired News ------------ Tech/bus news --------------792 subscribers
Boing Boing ------------ Wonderful things ------------719 subscribers
Google Weblog -------- news on search engine -----628 subscribers
Dilbert ------------------ Web Comics ------------------552 subscribers
The Register ----------- Criticism on IT ---------------498 subscribers
Kuro5hin --------------- Trenchy tech&culture ------438 subscribers
Joel on Software ------ Software Management -----435 subscribers
Gizmodo --------------- Gadgets ------------------------390 subscribers
Salon.com ------------- Makes you think --------------354 subscribers
New York Times ------- Latest from NYT -------------330 subscribers
Quotes of the Day ---- Humorous Quotations ------ 328 subscribers
Scientific American --- Science&Technology ------- 291 subscribers
BBC News -------------- Up to date --- Worldnews ---273 subscribers
CNET News ------------ Tech/bus/IT news -----------265 subscribers

Are we just in the upswing phase, or is there, even on a global scale, just a small audience for blogs?
I welcome any comments, as well as tips for other popular blogs with possibly thousands of subsribers,. e.g. fan sites.

blogging communities and groupthink

Web logging or blogging seems easy in itself. As long as the world wide web has existed, people were able to put their ideas online as a kind of diary. Where personal homepages are relatively static, weblogs or blogs are dynamic by definition. Every now and then, a paragraph or chapter is added to the endless logging. This process would not be different from ordinary diaries, if no one but the author and possibly some of their close relatives would read the ideas. Instead the blogs are open for the world to read. In principle an audience of millions may read along with someone’s blog, once this is popular. In practice popular blogs rather reach tens to hundreds of readers, most of whom will never give their reaction.

When readers start to react, an interesting new phase takes off, where blogs are getting interrelated: one blogger reacts on another, who might react on yet another blogger and so on. This mechanism of interdependency and mutual dependency are the key to what blogs are about. Stemming from an individual, they are part of an online social network, which is able to convey, spread and amplify certain ideas, while discouraging other ideas. This idea of resonance makes weblogs very useful to test and further ideas and thinking, although dangers of groupthink exist as well.

Blogs are no blessing in themselves, but they can be used for positive purposes, such as open debates, learning organisations, and scientific research. In times of political extremism it is certainly worthwhile to address the negative side of blogging as well. As said groupthink can emerge and the question remains whether public debates can exist within niches on the internet where healthy criticism may be absent.
I would be grateful if readers could send me examples (positive and negative) of blogging communities that have emerged. I may be mistaking and maybe blogs are always personal in their essence and seldom coalesce with other blogs for an extended period. As said, I welcome your reactions.

PvdA Leiden - Een dag niet gelogd is een dag niet geleefd

In june 2003 SIGCHI.NL invited some experts on weblogging on the role of weblogs in online democracy. Marije van den Berg is one of the politicians who use the weblog to communicate directly with citizens. It was quite amazing to see how rapid discussions evolve using weblogs. For most of the audience this was the first encounter with real online democracy.

In her weblog Marije mentions the workshop presentation which she gave together with Frans de Jong, Bart Lacroix (Ibas Consulting) and Wiebe de Jager (Netherlands Institute for Multiparty Democracy)

PvdA Leiden - Een dag niet gelogd is een dag niet geleefd

Donderdag was een geweldig leuke dag. Met Wiebe van www.democratie-digitaal.nl, Frans (u uit de reactiepanelen van dit log wellicht bekend) en Bart van Webleven de deelnemers aan het sigchi-congres (de special interest group computer human interaction) door de F-side op het web geloosd. Drukke dag, met veel indrukken. En een mobiele telefoon die uit stond, want ja, tijdens het geven van een workshop ga je niet bellen, toch?

Hello World

Today is my first day as a story blogger. I do this work as part of an ongoing research project on stories as a means for knowledge sharing.