• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, March 28, 2005

Web blogging may have commanded a large share of news headlines last year, but bloggers themselves are still a rare breed, amounting to less than 2 percent of the adult population, according to a recent study by Universal McCann and Media in Mind. The research is detailed in "The Rise of the Consumer-Generated Media Machine," Media magazine's April cover story, which explores how blogs, forums, and usergroups are changing marketers' relationships with consumers.

But, although the ranks of bloggers are small, demographic trends suggest that history is on their side. Young adults ages 18-24 are almost three times as likely as the general population to have blogged: When asked if they had ever kept an online journal, 5.2 percent of respondents in the 18-24 bracket responded yes, compared to 1.9 percent of all adults.

Do bloggers use media differently than their less expressive counterparts? Apparently so, according to the study. Bloggers over age 18 spend 14 hours and 14 minutes each week online, compared to non-bloggers' 8 hours and 47 minutes.

Adult bloggers also spend less time reading newspapers than non-bloggers--2 hours and 53 minutes a week for bloggers, compared to 3 hours and 7 minutes. Among young adults--who, as a group, spend less time reading the newspaper--the blogger/non-blogger distinction is even more pronounced. Bloggers between the ages of 18 and 24 spend just 46 minutes a week reading the paper, compared to 1 hour and 37 minutes for the non-bloggers.