A little more than a week ago Dave Sifry posted Technorati's most recent snapshot of the (continuing) growth and maturation of the blogosphere, including a number of analyses about how blogs continue to penetrate the media scene, the frequency of posting, where posts come from, and how Technorati is mitigating the scourge of splogs (or more accurately, taking steps to not count them).

Here's the concluding summary:

In Summary:

1. Technorati is now tracking more than 57 Million blogs.
2. Spam-, splog- and sping-fighting efforts at Technorati are paying dividends in terms of the reduction of garbage in our indexes, even if it does seem to impact overall growth rates.
3. Today, the blogosphere is doubling in size approximately every 230 days.
4. About 100,000 new weblogs were created each day, again down slightly quarter-over-quarter but probably due in part to spam fighting efforts.
5. About 4% of new splogs get past Technorati's filters, even if it is only for a few hours or days.
6. There is a strong correlation between the aging and post frequency of blogs and their authority and Technorati ranking.
7. The globalization of the blogosphere continues. Our data appears to show both English and Spanish languages are a more universal blog language than the other two most dominant language, Japanese and Chinese, which seem to be more regionally localized.
8. Coincident with a rise in blog posts about escalating Middle East tensions throughout the summer and fall, Farsi has moved into the top 10 languages of the blogosphere, indicating that blogging continues to play a critical role in debates about the important issues of our times.

The last two points are of significant interest, and here's a pie chart that gives us a sense of the spreading globalization of blogging:

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David Sifry's State of the Blogosphere has another installment.  While the last one focused on the growth of the blogosphere (that it is still growing, but begs the question, but for how much longer), this one looks at two very important facets of the "modern" blogosphere -- languages used and the growth of tagging.

Let's look at language first.  While English might be the de facto language of commerce, and even the Internet, it is becoming less important as the language of the blogosphere.  English is steadily declining as the majority language of the blogosphere and Japanese and Chinese are growing quickly.  While Sifry admits that many languages, like Korean, might be under represented, it is clear that the nature of the online world is changing.  With that change all of us, from software developers to advertisers to ad networks, need to face facts ... we're going to need to support Asian languages better and cater to that huge (and growing) audience.

Now let's look at tagging.  Technorati pioneered tagging as a way for people to go beyond gross categories (say blogging or blog editors) to smaller, more granular descriptors (like Qumana).  To say that tagging has taken off is like saying Canadians like hockey.  The adoption of tagging has been nothing short of stellar.  The chart below shows that almost half of all blog posts are tagged and the rate of increase is just growing.  Unlike the growth of blogs, the growth of tagging can continue longer because as new bloggers join they have to "catch up" and start tagging.  Tagging isn't perfect.  Since it is a user-driven system different tags can be used for the same concepts, but the tags are necessarily linked.  Take blog editors and offline blog editors.  To me both of these tags mean the same thing, and Qumana is one of those tools, but are they linked?  If you search for blog editors will you find the same content as offline blog editors?  Probably not, unless the post is tagged with both of them.

So this is a clear flaw, but one that those of us who are thinking and writing about tags recognize.  I think it's only a matter of time before someone develops a way, probably based on search engine algorithms, to start linking tags together into larger groups ... even across languages.

In addition to the lack of connection among synonymous tags, there is the looming threat of tag-spam.  David doesn't think this is going to be a major problem:

Of course, one of the remaining open questions is whether or not that will lead to massive gaming of the system, but current trends seem to present evidence that large-scale gaming is not occurring. In fact, my belief is that because tags are built as hyperlinks inside the document, and thus visible to the reader, that a strong social pressure to use appropriate tags (or at least to not use inappropriate tags) manifests itself, especially with bloggers who want to cultivate influence and readers.

I don't share his opinion that tag-spam will be prevented by a self-policing system, but since it is on Technorati's radar--and many of ours as well--I expect (and hope) that potential solutions can be
found before it becomes a problem.

Qumana is, of course, big on tags and tagging.  We put one-click, easy tagging into our editor early on (first we believe).  We chat with the folks working on tags and tagging whenever we can.  Tags, once the connectors are built between synonymous tags, can be used to build larger and larger groups of interest.  All fun stuff to come down the road.

Where does this leave us?  This is David's summary of his State of the Blogosphere installment:

• The blogosphere is multilingual, and deeply international
• English, while being the language of the majority of early bloggers, has fallen to less than a third of all blog posts in April 2006.
• Japanese and Chinese language blogging has grown significantly.
• Chinese language blogging, while continuing to grow on an absolute basis, has begun to decline as an overall percentage of the posts that Technorati tracks over the last 6 months
• Japanese, Chinese, English, Spanish, Italian, Russian, French, Portuguese, Dutch, and German are the languages with the greatest number of posts tracked by Technorati.
• The Korean language is underrepresented in this analysis
• Language breakdown does not necessarily imply a particular country or regional breakdown.
• Technorati now tracks more than 100 Million author-created tags and categories on blog posts.
• The rel-tag microformat has been adopted by a number of the large tool makers, making it easy for people to tag their posts. About 47% of all blog posts have non-default tags or categories associated with them.

Hat tips: Bloggers Blog, WebProNews

Tags: Technorati, state of the blogosphere, tags, tagging, tag-spam, international blogosphere

As I discussed in depth on the Qumana Investor Blog, David Sifry has released the latest in his quarterly State of the Blogosphere reports.

This kind of growth is nothing short of astounding and a serious question is "can it keep going?".  Personally I think it's a yes and no answer.  Yes for the short-medium term. No, of course, for the long-term.  Let's consider the growth of the web itself.  It grew extremely rapidly, then just reached a point where the "easy sites" had been done.  This is fine, there will be continued growth for years to come, just maybe not at a 6 month doubling rate!  How long at this rate?  I'm guessing at least through the end of this year.  Lots of individuals and small businesses haven't jumped on the bandwagon and I expect they will over the next six months to one year.

What's next?  As Mark Evans and I have discussed: blog-vertising.

Tags: Technorati, blogosphere growth, blogvertising