Dare Obasanjo from Microsoft has written that my post of 8 Dec stating that MSN Spaces has 27 million blogs is inaccurate, because they actually have more.
What the figure is though is still a mystery, and I’ve asked him nicely in his comments to give me the figure. As with the Blog Herald Blog Count I regularly email blog hosts asking for figures but I very rarely get a response. Hence, counting blogs is at best an educated guess based on media reports and comments from insiders (such as the comment from Dare originally) to estimate the number of blogs each provider has. The point always comes back to my central point when I first started the Blog Herald Blog Count: there are a LOT MORE BLOGS out there than the 10-20 million the mainstream press generally quote (although I’d note some outlets now quote some of my earlier figures of 60-70 million). The last Blog Count estimated that there was more than 100 million, where as I’d be guessing now (without doing a formal list) that the figure is actually getting closer to 150 million blogs. Why is this so important? well when I started the common figure was 5 million and I was estimating about 30 million. 30 million then is a lot more important as a social trend and significant field than 5 million. 100-150 million blogs now is a lot more significant than the 22 million odd blogs Technorati is currently tracking. When you’ve got, and can prove that the blogosphere is a lot more larger than is reported it will gain more prominence and respect from the media, marketers, government and others. The blogosphere is still a lot bigger than is being reported. Myspace: 40 million, Xoom: 40 million, MSN Spaces: 30 million, that’s 110 million straight away….
