Why 15 Million Is A Big Number

I’ve been reading the chatter about the blog world capping out at 15 million active blogs. It seems that the growth of blogging has stalled. Well I am not sure that’s true if you count twittering, facebooking, flickring, yelping, and the like as blogging. I do.

But even so, when looked at in the context of the 10 to 1 rule, 15 million is a huge number.

The 10 to 1 rule says that in social media, for every 10 readers you need one content creator. So 15 million bloggers will serve 150 million blog readers. That’s a ton of blog readers.

cNet suggests that the blogging bubble has burst. I don’t think it’s a bubble. I think its a revolution. We are taking over the media, slowly but surely. And this revolution isn’t going to burst. It may morph as new tools emerge that allow people to express themselves publicly.

I think the more interesting number would be the percentage of internet audience time that is spent on social media. I am sure it’s still growing (maybe exponentially) and traditional media (including cnet) is declining.