One blog a second...blogs are more important than sex

I can't remember who told me this first, or where I read this, but it's true. I've just checked it. A search on Google for 'blog' yields 1.590.000.000 entries. If you search on 'sex', you'll get 699.000.000.



From eflgeek comes links to the Economist and two recent articles on blogging: 'It's the links, stupid' and 'Among the audience'.



The first article mentions that "the “blogosphere” is doubling in size every five months" and that one blog is made every second.



It was interesting to see the comment too that "many adolescents consider e-mail passé, and instead are using either instant messaging (IM) or blogging for their communications". That is what I've seen with my students. I recently conducted a survey, and the younger ones (12-16) never use e-mail. Just about all of them use IM, and quite a lot of them have their own blog or photoblog. Perhaps it's that e-mail is associated with the adult world, or the world of work? What is true is that it's just not cool.



In the second article, the Economist identifies that what many people have described as Web 2.0, is leading to a new 'Age of participation'. What is interesting to me about all this is the change in where we get our news from. In my twenties, I relied on newspapers to tell me what was new. Very rarely would I not hear about something first(a new trend, etc) from a newspaper. Then it would usually be picked up by TV if it was considered more mainstream.



Now, it has totally changed. I was blogging and podcasting before I saw either of them mentioned in a newspaper or magazine (the exception is probably Wired), and I was even approached here by a Spanish journalist to talk about blogs in education for an article.