Confusion Remains about their Definition

About 13% of the affluent surveyed each month by Spectrem report that they check at least one internet financial blog for industry information and trends, per Spectrem Group research. 

It is easy to predict that number rising steadily in the future as younger, more web savvy investors reach affluence, and blogs continue to gain acceptance as a legitimate information source. The Blog Herald reports that the number of blogs in the world has exceeded 70 million. While many in the traditional media mourn the rise of blogs as a misguided medium allowing non-experts to too easily publish erroneous and incorrect heresy and information to the world, many more now see the new format as a tool for the democratization of information; a means to include the “lay expert” into the equation of traditional publishing.

Blogs Change Online Content

The financial world has felt the shift from blogs, just like every other industry. No longer are consumers forced to get their information from “expert” editors and writers anointed by publishing monoliths, they can now read the blogs of their neighbor down the street who has an opinion about hedge funds he’d like to share with the world. But now large publishing institutions have appropriated the once renegade form for their own purposes, and it has become just another ordinary publishing tool again; another way to reach the masses along with newspapers, magazines, columns on-line and off, and websites. Witness the Wall Street Journal’s recently launched and wildly popular blogs.

To clarify: Blog is World Wide Web short-hand for “Web Log.” Two words crunched together, as webophiles have a habit of doing, into a palatable (and somewhat unattractive) one syllable tidbit. Blogs began life roughly eleven years ago, in the form of online diaries where ordinary people spilled their guts about anything their hearts desired. People read blogs about anything from ultra cute baby animal pictures at www.cuteoverload.com to political punditry at www.thehuffingtonpost.com or car repair advice at www.autoeducation.com/blog. Blogs can be an invaluable source of information or a guilty pleasure but they have become a permanent and influential part of the online landscape.

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*Note that many of these websites do not publish “blogs” and respondents may be confusing online content for a blog format.

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