• by Paul Gough , October 6, 2003

The explosion in Web logs and hosting sites has turned out to have a seamy side beyond what's written on the pages: No one's paying much attention.

A survey released Monday by Perseus Development Corp. finds that while the so-called blogs are popular among Internet users - there are expected to be more than five million by the end of the year and 10 million by the end of 2004 - few reach the traction of more traditional Web sites. And for many, the musings aren't enough for the even the bloggers to update. A blog is a frequent publication of personal thoughts, not unlike a journal, and links to Web sites, according to marketingterms.com.

Perseus estimates there are 4.12 million blogs on eight hosting services. But the research company estimated that 66% - 2.72 million - haven't been updated in two months and that 1.09 million haven't been updated since the first day. The average duration for an abandoned blog was 126 days, according to the survey of 3,634 blogs. The study was done for the BloggerCon 2003 conference at the Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Mass., which was held last weekend.

"Apparently the blog-hosting services have made it so easy to create a blog that many tire-kickers feel no commitment to continuing the blog they initiate," said Jeffrey Henning, who wrote the study for Perseus Development Corp. The study said that abandonment rates were higher for Pitas, BlogSpot and Diaryland and lower for Xanga and LiveJournal; three other sites didn't have enough sample to compare.

The study fleshed out demographics on the blogging population, which it said with 90% being created and written by people between the ages of 13 and 29. Fifty-one percent of bloggers are between 13 and 19, and 39% are between 20 and 29. Just under 6% are between 30 and 39, with 1.3% or under between 10-12, 40-49, 50-59 and 60-69. A slight majority of bloggers (56%) are female, and the study found they're more likely to stick to it than males.

The average blogger is a teen-age girl who updates her friends and classmates on her life, with words and spellings not quite as informal as instant messaging, Perseus said. Updates are done twice a month, Perseus said.