There has been a couple of posts going on in Steve Rubel’s Micropersuasion blog about blogging peaking in 2007.
Will blogging really peak in 2007?
According to the later post, Steve said
According to AP, Gartner says the number of bloggers will level off in the first half of next year at roughly 100 million worldwide. “The reason: Most people who would ever dabble with Web journals already have. Those who love it are committed to keeping it up, while others have gotten bored and moved on.”
Is that true? I personally don’t think so. I think that blogging may peak someday (or rather, I think it will evolve rather than peak) but NOT in 2007, not in 2008, not in 2009. I think blogging is at its infancy. In fact, the whole Internet is at its infancy!
Why do I say this?
I’m taking my own country (Singapore) as an example.
Singapore, being a small country, is one of the countries with the highest Internet penetration rates. In fact, a couple of weeks back, a countrywide free wireless access service was just launched.
When Internet penetration is high, one would expect many people to be super Internet savvy, and be all comfortable to start a blog right?
But that is not the case. Not yet.
Out of a random 10 Singaporeans I see on the streets, my guess would be only 1 – 2 would have a blog, or have even visited Blogger.com The blogging population in Singapore are younger generation. The elder generation is learning, and some are learning fast.
But it still takes time!
It was easy for myself to pick up blogging, since I was addicted to working on a computer since I was 6 or 7 years of age, but for others, the computer is a complicated BOX with many buttons that does magical things!
So this is the story for Singapore, and mind you, Singapore has a population of only 4 million. Internet access is now available in most cities in the world, but is everybody using it yet? What about the “upcoming China and India?”
The popular Chinese search engine Baidu.com just launched it Blog Search service a couple of weeks back. Surely you wouldn’t invest resources on a trend that is peaking?
There is still a looooooong way to go for blogs dudes. In my opinion, blogs will evolve with more multimedia, more media options, more interactivity, more animations… not peak.
Keep blogging. 
57 million is a small number for the world.
I think Casual Blogging may peak. When? I dunno. 2007? You mean 2 more weeks and blogging will peak? Cannot be lah!
Professional blogging has just started on the other side of the world and has yet to arrive to this part of the world yet. With 4 billion population in Asia and more access to the Internet, 57 million is really a small number!
I don’t think blogging will peak in 2007. I hope Blogger.com will die tomorrow!
I think the Forrester survey is all wrong and I wonder why it’s getting so much exposure on all news websites. Blogging is just starting, professional or non-professional. It’s just like saying that new websites are going to peak. Of course not for a long time to come.
I don’t think blogging is going to peak for a long time to come simply because there are millions of people who aren’t even using the Internet, forget blogging.
Its supposed to peak in 07 but after that its supposed to dramaticly fall because everyone will be bored of it, and i really can see it happeneing.
their will be something new lets look at forums for an example they peaked a couple of years ago but look at it now their not everywhere like they used to be so i can see this happening with blogging.
Checking if it posts with a new API key.
That’s true Shi, maybe personal and casual blogging will peak… or rather, people will be less interested in blogging once something new comes up. But professional blogging is still so rare here in Singapore and the region.
A majority of the people in Singapore are still yet to make that paradigm shift in thinking – in reaching out to the world using the Internet.
Guys my apologies – Akismet is giving me trouble and pushing your posts to the spam box… the thing is… I don’t know how to solve that challenge – the only good way I can think of is to check my spam box more often.
Sincerest apologies! 😕
More recent information on this has just come to light. I cover it here: http://www.indium.com/rickshort/entry.php?id=526
I really think that all the data suggests that blogging GROWTH will slow (of course it will – something this prolific can’t spread at this rate forever), but that blogging will evolve and grow in signifigance and importance for a loooong time. Blogging of 2008 may look different from that of 2006, but it will still be blogging. Heck – the whole way we use the www will evolve a lot in he very near future. That’s cool!
Eager to learn your opinion.
I like your blog. Hoping to meet you in Singapore sometime soon.
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Thanks Rick!
Yeah I guess everything has to die down somehow… but I guess really – not in 2007! Things may change as new technologies emerge, blogs will evolve to include better means of incorporating information.
Podcasting and Vlogging are still so rare! It is in the growth stage, in my opinion, growth is nowhere near peaking!