Some new statistics have been released regarding the use of blogging by the American masses by the ,a href=”http://www.pewinternet.org/reports/toc.asp?Report=113″>Pew Internet Project. According to this Associated Press article:

The Pew Internet and American Life Project, in a study released Sunday, found that somewhere between 2% and 7% of adult Internet users in the United States keep their own blogs.

Of those, only about 10% update them daily, the majority doing so only once a week or less often.

Some bloggers indeed update their journals often, in some cases several times a day. But it’s clearly a minority who are taking advantage of the blog and its potential to steer the online discourse with personal musings about news events and daily life.

[…]

Among other findings: 21% of Internet users have posted photos on Web sites, and 20% say they have allowed others to download video or music files from their computers. Seven percent have webcams that let others see live pictures of them over the Net.

Source: USA Today, “Between 2 and 7 percent of American adults blogging” via Nick Bradbury

I find three things very interesting here:

1. The number rised sharply from the end of last year to the beginning of this year (most are wondering, however, how many of the young adults and teens are contributing to this space)
2. The article seems to indicate, to a very wide audience, that influencing a group of people is “easy” as seen by the comment on “influencing discourse”. Of course, the underlying power laws (as elegantly described by Clay Shirky and recently lamented by Seth Finkelstein) may stem user’s success, real or perceived
3. Close to one fifth of users have both uploaded and exchanged digital assets (be it photos or videos) and web cams are on the rise. The age of the digital image is certainly encroaching on us (if we’re not already embedded)