Last week heralded the release of Technorati’s “The State of the Blogosphere 2008“. Its a rollercoaster document in 5 parts full of explosions, manly heroes, saucy nuns and… no, wait, its not full of saucy nuns. It IS however full of very interesting data about blogging, bloggers, the blogosphere and the web as a social tool. Hurrah.
One thing that caught my attention upon perusal was a quote from Martin Varsavsky (CEO of FON) where he says:
In English I blog to communicate my ideas and views, in Spanish, where for some unknown reason many more people comment, I write to learn
What I found interesting was how he feels Spanish speakers are more likely to comment on blogs than English speakers. Now, is this a socio-cultural phenomenon wherein Spanish speaking peoples are more inclined to make their voice heard OR is it the result of there being less high-quality Spanish language blogs so there are only a few authoritative ones that, as a result, get a larger readership and thus more comments?
Sadly Technorati’s report, for all its considerable good, hasn’t been able to illuminate the world’s different approaches to blogging since the report focuses primarily on English speaking bloggers. I imagine, however, it won’t be long before we do begin to learn the nuanced ways in which different cultures and peoples interact with blogs and that, I think, would be fascinating to learn; not only from a marketing persepctive but also in the wider context of the social web.
