Who reads blogs?

There are plenty of blogs in the world these days. There are the political, the comedic, the personal. Some are dedicated to sport, criticism, business. There are some by pros and plenty by amateurs. While most of the biggies are based in the US and are thus US-centric, there are plenty from other places, including Australia and Hong Kong.

This blog is a random mix of family news (for the family and friends back in Oz), Hong Kong happenings and other bits I pick up on from time to time. It is deliberately like this and in keeping with this theme there are deliberately no categories to sort through the mess. The blog reflects whatever comes into my little head at the time. My thoughts are not in order or in categories and neither is this blog. For that I make no apology. Hopefully there's something interesting enough to keep you reading, otherwise skip to the next entry and it will be on something very different.

But back to the original question. Who reads them? My theory is mostly they are read by either other bloggers or those who know bloggers. It is an ever-growing circle but it is still confined within itself. There are few outlets from the blogweb to the wider world or even into the wider internet.

This grouping of bloggers is a self-selected elite. Why an elite? It is easy to start blogging but there are still barriers to entry. You have to find a host, work out the format, decide on what your blog is for, create it and then post content. You need to be comfortable with technology and have a rudimentary knowledge of the net. Inevitably this requires a few things: computer and (usually) high-speed internet access, an ability to write at least moderately well and having something to say. Something different to say, otherwise your blog will remain visited by yourself and your Ma and no one else.

The blogweb is a slice of humanity. It is not representative of all humanity. It is not even representative of all internet users. It is diverse with different views and people...in some ways. In others it is very much all the same. There are so many original voices and spending some time following link to link can lead to the remote parts of the net. But what does it all add up to? Do blogs really do much? Can they influence anything in the real world? Or are they like those newspaper editorials that everyone gets wound up about but don't do anything to change anyone's mind? Doesn't all this diversity get monotonous?

All these blogs are just (mostly) talking to each other. Ideas and memes just spin around the blogweb at a hundred clicks a minute, but do they go anywhere else? Are there any examples where the blogweb has had an influence on the "real" world?

I sometimes imagine that all this blogging is a great diversion of energy for lots of intelligent people. It is the human equivalent of putting the 1,000 monkeys with 1,000 typewriters in a room to come up with Shakespeare. From my limited knowledge blogging has only caught on in a big way in the last three years. Maybe it's all too early to tell if it will amount to anything more than giving people an outlet to vent and have a mutual admiration society for each other. A way to say to the world: "I'm an individual," followed by the blogweb's "We're all individuals. We're all different," with apologies to Monty Python.

I've changed my mind because I read "XYZ" is something you rarely read in the blogweb. I don't know the answer. When is the last time you saw that in a blog?

To answer the original question of who reads weblogs? Everyone and no-one. Everyone in the blog web (or with connections to it). No-one that matters.

I'm ready for someone to change my mind.

The truth is I don't know the answer.