Social media is evolving, and sharing thoughts, pictures and stories has become commonplace in day-to-day life. Blogging is the latest trend in the social media world, with sites like WordPress, Gawker, TypePad, Blogger and Tumblr growing exponentially and showing no sign of slowing any time soon.
Pingdom.com released a study on the top 100 blogs and which blogging platforms are used. WordPress dominated the market with 49 percent, combining its self-hosted and WordPress-hosted platforms. Other blogging platforms that scored high include Drupal at 6 percent, Gawker at 5 percent, Blogger at 7 percent and Tumblr at 6 percent.
WordPress.com is currently the most popular blogging platform, with more than 58 million sites in the world, according to its website. Weber State University’s The Signpost uses WordPress, along with major companies such as NBC Sports, UPS, CNN and TechCrunch. WordPress.com reports that almost 400 million people view more than 3.8 billion pages over the course of one month.
Jordan Bess, a nursing student at WSU, uses WordPress to host her blog.
“I keep a blog because it’s like an electronic diary for me,” Bess said. “I’m not out to get a million followers or so many likes. It’s a way I can keep a record with pictures of where I’ve been and where I want to go in my life. I would like to look back in a few years from now and be able to remember where I came from.”
Gawker pulled in more than 80,000 views globally in November this year. More than 66,000 of these views were from computers, with more than 14,000 on mobile devices. Gawker.com reported that its most popular demographic is college males ages 25-34.
Blogger.com has continued to grow since being purchased by Google in 2003. The main users on Blogger.com are women in their late 30s.
Davina Wang, a business student at WSU originally from California, uses a blog to keep in touch with her family.
“I use Blogger because I can make it private and invite only the people I want to have access to my blog,” Wang said. “I use the blog to post pictures and updates about my family so that my other family members in different states can see what we have been up to. My sisters also keep blogs of the same type, so it’s an easy way to share information and keep it private.”
Pingdom.com reported that Tumblr has more than 50,000 blogs and publishes more than 55 million posts per day. From 2011-12, Tumblr grew from 12-41 million blogs, and the number of posts per day grew by 500 percent.
Shelby Karr, a WSU art major, said she thinks keeping a blog is too much of a time commitment.
“I can barely work and attend school, so I don’t have time to blog,” Karr said. “I do follow my friends’ blogs and read them in my free time. I enjoy seeing what they have to say and reading their viewpoints on different topics.”
Karr said her favorite blog is The Pioneer Woman. She has been following the blog for almost two years.
“I love the Pioneer Woman,” Karr said. “Her pictures are beautiful and her writing is witty. I actually find myself visiting her blog at least once a day because there is always something new.”
