I think it was Glenn Reynolds who alerted the world to the fact that during the Iraqi war 4% of people now use blogs as their primary source of news. If that is true then that is an amazing number. Think about it. If we take the North American market with approximately 300 million people as the population of this analysis then let’s conservatively say that some 150 million gather news in some form or the other. That means 6 million use the blogosphere as their primary source of news, but it also means that those who use other sources may very well turn to blogs to get their secondary news fix, which is analysis, discussion and background information all of which are the real essence of blogging. Let’s say the secondary group consists of another 6 million people. That’s a total of 12 million in an industry (for lack of a better word) that is less than 3 years old. I have no clear idea of where we are in terms of internet usage per household but I would assume that even in North America it has some ways to go, especially given the fact that in a lot of places dial-in rather than high speed connections are the norm. There is potential that over the next five years there may well be over 20 million consumers of bloggage. I know, this is very simple ‘back of the envelope’ accounting, but I believe there is some merit to it and it is probably not unrealistic to think that the blogosphere will become a major media outlet, if it isn’t already. And remember, I have not included the rest of the world in my sketchy analysis.

If there’s scope for a viable business model to support all of this remains to be seen. Andrew Sullivan has devoted quite a few posts to this subject in the past and has had to revert to ‘pledge week’, in order to sustain his blog, yours truly cutting him a very nice Christmas cheque, but I think he deserves it and that is precisely the point. People are willing to pay for what they deem to be a useful and interesting service. Others have their ‘tipping point’ but neither system can claim to support a viable business. Yet with the potential market there should be a strong business case and I think established media will have to come to some realization that there is a new kid on the block that is nibbling on what some of them would have believed was a captured market. My intake of news from traditional sources (magazines, newspapers) has already reduced significantly thanks to the phenomenal assortment of news and analysis presented by the blogosphere. And, people lead fairly intense lives and clicking through your top ten list of favourite blogs is not that time consuming, especially given the fact that a significant group of people has internet access both at work and at home. It may be too early to transform blogging in into a sustainable and profitable business model but while analyzing the 4% number I started to work on a case imagining there was a group of extremely hard-nosed venture capitalists sitting in front of me. They will not buy into weblogs as a business, for now. Until that moment we do it for the love of writing and discussing the news and whatever else keeps us preoccupied. It’s great to be part of that experience.