Aussie blogger - will blog for bandwidth

Ross Dawson discusses an SMH article which quotes his discussion (still following?) of the state of blogging in Australia, tying it in with bandwidth:

"Of the top 25,000 blogs globally, around 9000 are in English", says Mr Dawson. Of those, only 75 originate in Australia. But there are 420 million native English speakers in the world. "With Australia's population of 21 million, we comprise 5 per cent of English speakers. But with 75 blogs out of 9000, we comprise less than 1 per cent of English blogs. We are underrepresented by a factor of six or so."

...

"I think one key reason is lack of bandwidth in Australia, and of its high cost. Australian internet connections are slower than they are in the rest of the world, and Australia is almost unique in capping usage at quite low levels."

There should be some adjustment in interpreting those numbers for local vs. global readers.

You could only make such a simplistic percentage comparison for countries of a similar size.

For instance a widely read blog on local Californian politics will probably rate in the top 25,000 blogs globally - since California has such a huge population. A widely read blog on local NSW politics could easily have a higher percentage of the available readership, be more influential etc. - and yet not rate a mention in the top 25,000 blogs.

Now I'm not saying that the general observation is wrong - but these figures don't back it up as clearly as it may first appear.

As for bandwidth - blogging doesn't take a lot of bandwidth. Price is a far more important factor. Very cheap always on internet is going to promote more blogging than very high bandwidth internet that doesn't reduce the cost of the cheapest plans.

But even with cost, I don't think that the key issues are so simple. As a nation we seem to be underrepresented in entrepreneurship in general, and I think blogging is simply literary entrepreneurship.

Solving that chestnut is a rather difficult socio/economic/politic/educational issue - beyond the scope of this Australian blogger at the moment ;)

Original linker: Corporate Engagement.