Thoughts on blogs

One of the things I notice is that most blogs have a similar structure (articles listed by most recent in middle column, links in right column), which is what allows them to share content so easily. It also makes them not-so-sexy from a graphic design perspective. From an information design perspective, however, they can be quite interesting, especially if you start looking at the way content and users move between them. Here is a real time map of the physical location of people submitting comments to weblogs.com:

Ben Rubin also did a stunning project called "Listening Post" where he pulled comments from hundreds of blogs and chatrooms and displayed them on a screen and had a computer read them:

Here are some numbers from a recent report to give you some idea of scale: A new study by the Pew Trust found that 38% of the American public knows what blogs (about the same percentage that can locate New York on a map of the United States). 27% of total internet users say they read blogs. This is an increase of 58% from January 2004.