More Teens and College Students Creating Their Own Blogs

We knew it would happen, it was just a question of when. After a mountain of buzz and wild optimism on the potential power of blogs and young people over the past 18 months, according to our latest research, we are finally seeing some material gains in the number of young people who are creating and updating their own personal blogs in addition to reading other blogs and commenting on them. Based on the latest Youth Trends Lifestyle Report, 22% (25% of males and 19% of females) report updating their own personal blog at least once in the past week. That represents a sharp increase from the 13% of respondents who updated their blog at least once in the past week last fall. The most popular sites/services young people are using to create and update their blogs are MySpace, LiveJournal and Typepad. We also saw very healthy gains among young people that are reading other blogs and taking action by commenting on them. According the Report, 44%, up sharply from 36% last fall, report reading a blog site at least once in the past week and another 32%, nearly one in three, report commenting on another blog site at least once in the past week. Based on the current growth trend, we expect nearly one in three (32%) respondents to update their own personal blog by this fall. It might be a smart move for a youth-focused media company to go out there and aggregate some of the more wide-reaching youth-created blogs and turn them into a sellable network offering the opportunity for the creator to wet his or hear beak while the media company can rapidly increase their reach and thus their value proposition to the media buying marketplace.