• August 8, 2005

Nearly 50 million U.S. Internet users visited blogs in the first quarter of this year--a 45 percent increase from the first quarter of 2004, according to a new report by comScore Networks, "Behaviors of the Blogosphere: Understanding the Scale, Composition and Activities of Weblog Audiences."

The report--authored by comScore Network's Graham Mudd and DoubleClick's Director of Research Rick Bruner, and sponsored in part by Gawker Media and SixApart--also found that blog readers visit nearly twice as many Web pages as average Internet users, and are more likely to shop online. According to the report, 51 percent of blog visitors made an online purchase, compared to 39 percent of the all Internet users.

Blog visitors are 11 percent more likely than the average online user to have household incomes of at least $75,000, and are also 11 percent more likely than the average Web user to connect via broadband.

--Wendy Davis