DKos had its highest traffic in October, not September. This is a quiet political season, that's all. Things will pick up as politics heat up again.

Why is this "worrying"?  Do we want blogs to take over the internet?

I think the state of the blogosphere is fine.  What more do you want?

Getting people to read is like pulling teeth anymore.  We may have saturated the number of people willing to get information by reading anything.  If Blog readership has plateaued, and I'm unconvinced it has yet, that means we need to develop structures that turn the existing blog readership into a more effective force for change (social/political/whatever).

This is a false report - the Gallup poll is flawed.
It is measuring trendlines on too short a base.

Here's the deal: on a month to month basis, you see a drop. Even a quarterly drop.

But overall, the time spent relative to other mediums is still increasing.

Look carefully at the exact date they drew their conclusion: September 2005. / October.

What happens in the latter part of October? Give up? How about gift shopping online. There is now a "black monday" for gift shopping for the holidays after Thanksgiving and it was up 16%.

So the conservation principles hold, the people were online, for a different reason. If you spend every minute of every day blogging, then you need to get a life. However, if this year, you're blogging more than you were last year, instead of maybe yesterday or tomorrow - then you have your real answer. Gallup is paid to tell the TV people what they want to hear.

And that is so that the TV people can get paid what they think they're worth.

My view: its on the rise, and your own ability to be objective, as a person, gives you more value and worth as a human being than ever before. Which is why I eat at the Democrat table, drink their wine / dig their earth but level on the mind as an independent.  Speaking personally.

But speaking objectively, this thing has no real credence at all. Its a statistical blip. Blogs will inrease almost exponentially for at least
another three years, then just trend with population as a fixed percentage.

Its funny how this poll is release, almost perfectly timed, to yesterday's story about blogging that was run nationally on NPR - how alienating and bad blogging is for relationships, a humour piece that fits in with an overall campaign of how wonderful it would be to have a TV ad.

Truth be told TV is falling. Blogs and other forms of communication, that are more direct. Are rising.

Ask George Gilder. He'll tell ya.

Could part of the reason be that the mainstream/traditional media seems to have come back to life some, and so people aren't looking for alternative sources of info/opinion anymore?

That would jive with the timing, since it was Katrina that was the tipping point that brought the media back to life.

I never read a blog until 3 months ago. Now I read MyDD regularly. I'm a 29-year-old IT professional with liberal family roots. I would imagine that makes me a member of MyDD's target audience. This is all anecdotal, but maybe I can shed some light on what attracts me (and maybe others) to the progressive blogosphere.

My impression of blogs in general was pretty negative. Personal diaries, rants and raves... It sounded like a waste of time. The political blogs seemed like and echo chamber, with lots of shots fired among the various blogs, he-said-she-said kind of stuff, who cares?

I didn't even read a serious political blog until I did a Google search for something (can't remember what) and one of Matt's posts came up. I was struck with its fresh ideas that I couldn't find in the op-eds in the news. I read more posts on MyDD, by other authors, and I thought they were spot on. I liked MyDD more than other blogs because it was more about politics than about policy.

Anyway, my point is that posts firing back at Redstate bloggers and Washington Post columnists are bad for the blog business. Those are important fights that I think should be covered, just not on the front page. There is nothing wrong with them per se, but they reinforce the idea among more casual readers that political blogs are echo chambers and a waste of time.

I understand that fights about language, semantics, etc. within the media (including the blogosphere) contribute to public perception. And I understand that media outlets' influence over public perception is controlled in part by public perception of the media outlets themselves. In other words, we should go ahead and show the blogosphere just how racist the Redstate people are. I just don't think that the rest of the progressive world cares.

One thing we can do to increase blog readership, is to keep going back to the grassroots and inviting them to participate. Lots and lots of activists don't know about/don't follow blogs at all.

In a perfect world, every state party would have a kick-ass website and blog. And they would encourage every county party to blog as well. (Wasn't there a project on this a year ago?)

DFA would push Blog for America more, and their network of DFA blogs for every state. They're also experimenting with blogs on DFA-Link.

MoveOn would start up a blog as well.

And the netroots would come together to develop a 50 state network of interactive blogs, to help tie everything together.

As I've been saying, the people with the political power in the US is the AARP, and they have good reason to dump the GOP as the cost of Iraq and the deficit have Bush scrambling to dismantle all their "entitlements."

AARP is also the biggest PAC in the US.

But blogs totally ignore them.

at least, when the older generation die off and the young replaces it. Even if only a small portion of youngsters will visit liberal blogs it will still be many more than in the current 60+ years category.

And also cheap Internet access will help.

Say that the blogosphere readers will double. That will be enough to have real poltical impact in a nation of passive voters. It will not be a revolution but it will make quite a big difference.

Blogging as you likely understand and appreciate it will not likely be a mass phenomena any more than "reading a newspaper" (which now hovers at around 50% reading once a week) will.

I would expect that as the elder generation drops out and the younger generation kicks in, blog/citizen journalism readership could go up to 50% or 60% of all adults, but the real mass phenomena is still going to be citizen-produced media.

This may sound trite, but what the blogs need is for the current reader to become more obedient.  We don't necessarily need MORE people reading blogs.

I use a strong word like obedient to illustrate the importance of people who read these blogs taking direction from the bloggers and poster into ACTION.  When Kos or Bowers ask for people to call and email senators pon Alito, a bigger percentage of people who read the blogs must do it.  Same with money if they have it (and REAL excuses for not giving ten or twenty bucks are flimsy at best).  When Kos and Bowers ask for Ciro, EVERYONE who can should get off their asses and give.

To be effective, the army of bloggers and posters must be organized and follow through on action plans.  That's where the REAL power is.  Not just eyeballs.

I wrote this in response to a comment about one of Digby's posts on 2/13/06 and I think it's even more relevant in light of "Blog Readership Flat:"

Digby Commenter:  
"We have to use the tools that are available to us (mostly just the internet) while we still have them, or the game will be lost until the economy collapses."

My Response:  "I don't understand why democratic organizations can't make an end run around the mainstream media machine and take out ads in daily/weekly newspapers and magazines and television to shout out our oppositional talking points if we can't get our democratic Congressmen and Senators to fight back and the media to tell the truth. And even if the internet has a lot of future scope, it doesn't yet have the same impact as the regular media. I can't remember the figure I read recently, but blogs only reach a very small percentage of the population at this point."

Instead of relying on the internet, liberals need to use any means available and even think outside the box.  Why aren't we using means such as ad space in newspapers and magazines, maybe even T.V., to trumpet immediate liberal responses to the various lies and liars on the right?

Come election time blog readership will shoot back up, and I bet it will be even higher than the surge in 2005. 2007's surge may be less than 2006's, or maybe the rate of growth will be less. (See seasonal employment from economics.)

Blog readership will be highest around elections and primaries, higher in Presidential and Congressional election years. But it will continue to grow, even if only due to structural factors -- more people with internet access, political literacy, and time to invest in politics. (Political psychology shows that patterns of investment describe how much time people spend attending to and participating in politics.)

Structurally, I bet blog readership is still rising, we are at the trough of the wave. Whenever elections are important, the peak of the blog-readership wave will be highest. If anything, blog readership numbers are a magnificently organic and flexible figure for measuring political attention, or at least progressive energy levels.

I don't buy this idea that numbers are decreasing. I think what we have is both a flattening of the readership among the many blogs, especially at the local level, and an embracement by traditional media of blog-like platforms for content. Website readership is going up, more mediums are adopting open content platforms, especially that are interconnected through tags and such.. . what we really have, is a failure of innovation among the establishment blogosphere. Is MyDD readership down?

I don't see this as a negative at all. A good six month pause is necessary. It's a consolidation phase. It happens to growth stocks all the time. As long as the rise isn't straight up and straight down. And that is certianly not the case. Readership has help steady for six months. This is a very positive development for the long term of the medium. Growth cannot continue to go straight up forever. It has to stabilize and consolidate and then resume it's upward trend.

We're just getting warmed up here folks.

What if the decline is because of your success.  Howard Dean is helping locals get started in local organized. I know a lot of people who used to be avid readers who are now pounding pavement for the Democrats.  They may just have less time to read.  If I were in the United States, I probably would be doing something other than just lurking and donating a little money.  I feel impotent.