Blogs As Trend Setters?

Obviously this will sound a bit self serving, though there appears to now be some research to back it up.

Bloggers and Internet pundits are exerting a "disproportionately large influence" on society, according to a report by a technology research company. Its study suggests that although "active" web users make up only a small proportion of Europe's on line population, they are increasingly dominating public conversations and creating business trends.

There's more, though certainly it's difficult to pin down precisely how much influence blogs and high activity Internet users might exert over society as a whole. But given their space, as well as influence-rs, what they may be are good predictors.

Blogs move quickly. It isn't unusual to see them have a complete discussion on an issue before the evening news. And given that, mostly, they are comprised of educated, reasonably financially secure individuals, it's understandable that their conversations could mirror a broader society.

Bloggers aren't rich, they aren't poor. They aren't all PHd's or lawyers, there's a little bit of everything thrown in. So, when they pick up on something as a group, it stands to reason there's something there.

That trending could be by the hour or day, but I don't see any reason why it wouldn't hold up for more significant trends, too.

"We're seeing this growing," said Julian Smith, an online advertising analyst with Jupiter Research and author of the report. "The strongest part of their influence is on the media: if something online suddenly becomes a story in the local press, then it matters."

Although unprompted contributors are generally younger and more vocal than the wider online population, they are increasingly important as opinion formers and trend-setters. Mr Smith says businesses, media organisations and advertisers reading blogs should be wary of making assumptions about their wider significance, but that their muscle cannot be ignored.

"They're not representative of the larger audience, but what they're saying does matter," he said. "It's a good straw poll - a snapshot of the verbal conversations going on that we can't measure."

Comments

[FloridaPatty]

and blogging has gone mainstream which makes me so very sad.

[lurking]

Interesting . . ."changing the national conversation."

"The strongest part of their influence is on the media: if something online suddenly becomes a story in the local press, then it matters."

I agree with this. We've seen this happen with the NH story and on networks like Fox. But has it happened with any serious stories and on reputable news networks? I'm not making light of this or of the importance of blogging, it will be interesting to see where it goes. Maybe it will lead to "Interactive news." Not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

Something else about blogging that might change things. Blogs store information about what the press was reporting and when. People can look it up online very easily. It is proof that new stories change over time and how.

[Cassandra]

Nice job, Dan :) Lurking makes a good point. I think that, in a way, blogs are making modern history more accessible to the ordinary man and woman as it unfolds, not just by recording and commenting on what the media have to say in an easily retrievable form, but by correcting the record - both at the time and as updates become available down the road.

That's pretty amazing when you think about it. It is now so much easier to get "the flavor of the times" - a researcher can look back and see what debates were raging as a particular event was happening. It certainly puts historical events in context and makes it much harder to rewrite history.

[MrsLevy]

No one will look at this crap two weeks from now.

MrsLevy