Blogging – an International Movement

On Feb. 25 I heard Dan Lackner’s interesting presentation on blogs which was sponsored by the American Marketing Association DC Chapter.  Dan is the Senior Vice President of comScore, an internet marketing research company which tracks the online activity of 2 million people.  Early on Dan noted that blogging is a highly global phenomenon.  According to his presentation worldwide traffic to blog sites outside of the U.S. is 84% and U.S. traffic is 16%.  Areas of the world where Web traffic to blogs is very high include South Korea, Argentina, Canada, Spain, Chile and Japan.  I was surprised to learn that blogging has taken off so strongly in other countries.  I have this vision of millions of people across the world simultaneously checking their favorite blogs a few times per day.  I didn’t know that the popularity of blogs was so strong outside of the U.S. and the sociologist in me can’t help but consider how the internet is contributing to a global culture.  I would love to interview people across the world to find out what they learn from blogs and how they became interested in them.  What are the differences between blog visitors and creators of different countries?  What are the similarities?  How does culture contribute to internet usage?  I hope that people from other countries will come to my blog and find the experience worthwhile.