Some blogging trends in India .. based on a study 'Blogging India: An MSN and Windows Live Report'

"A desire for self-improvement and personal development is found to be a key driver of India's blogosphere with a large majority of online users reading blogs to stay informed about world events. They enjoy reading about technology the most, followed closely by news and education. Elsewhere, technology content ranks low.

These findings suggest that blogging in India could become the "new fourth estate" with close to half the respondents believing that blogging content is as trustworthy as those of regular media outlets such as newspapers, radio and TV."

Some statistics are available here. And the Economic Times has more.

- 14% of internet users actively blog
- 39% are aware of blogs
- over 75% of all bloggers are men
- 85% are below the age of 35
- 49% said they read blogs to be entertained
- 50% found blogs by business leaders interesting
- in contrast, 24% found politicians' blogs interesting
- 58% started their blog to express themselves, while 40% to entertain others
- Half of all blogs receive 10 visitors or less per week
- 90% of bloggers spend up to 5 hours per week reading blogs or updating their own blogs

Am not sure how the research was conducted, but the article seems to suggest it is based on a survey among over 1000 visitors to the MSN India portal. This is by no means representative blogosphere in India - not many bloggers I know think highly of MSN or go to the portal at all.

Does anyone have access to the entire report and can you share it?

We really do need some good demographic and behavioural statistics on blogging and online social networking in India.

Technorati Tags: blogosphere, India, blogging, blog statistics, blogs

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