What data will I get to see?
Each blogger gets to see answers broken out for his/her own blog: sex, income, politics, flossing habits,
favorite TV shows, beer preferences... the works.
Bloggers decide what datasets to share with the public.
For example, here's the data Ann Althouse shares about her readers.
How is the data gathered?
The surveys are conducted by SurveyMonkey.com, which has
run more than two million surveys online since its launch in 1999.
Can I see other views of the data?
We'll be posting custom views of the data, some serious, some oddball, in coming days. Here are a few fluff questions.
Who is behind the Blog Reader Project?
Any blog can contribute readers to the project. The project is funded and organized
by Blogads.com, which is based in Carrboro, NC and represents 1300 leading American blogs.
Who will see this data?
Aggregated data will be available at BRP. You'll control display of your individual blog's data. Potential
advertisers and staffers of Blogads.com will see other data.
Why are you doing this?
We're curious. Since we started reading blogs in 2001, we've always believed that blogs have a radically new relationship with readers.
We try constantly to understand and articulate that difference.
Blogads.com started surveying blog readers in 2004, when 17,159
answered a survey that political bloggers linked to. The next year 30,079 answered our
call for survey and in 2006 a total of 56,000 took the survey. This year we decided to
run the whole thing through a single database to make the data more accessible and also
to give bloggers a more comprehensive view of how their readers interact with other blogs.
Second, because its clear that Comscore and Nielson Netratings don't get blogs,
using bulldozers to pick up diamonds, counting eyeballs when they should be counting synapses.
Finally, we believe bloggers should be able to control their own data.
But don't Neilson and Comscore have data on blogs?
The data looks only at the biggest blogs, folks with a minimum of 500,000 unique visitors a month. And it is heavily skewed towards at
home audiences, even when most blog hours are logged at work. And, as part of the scaffolding
of Publishing 1.0, their data pigeonholes readers as consumers, not producers of information;
as passive viewers rather than equal participants in the new informational ecosystem. We seek new metrics to understand the humans who have fled odorless, sterile manufactured media for
the lush continent of their own construction. What makes blogs uniquely powerful is NOT that
individuals are buyers of toaster ovens and cell phones - they undoubtedly are - but that they are hubs in new
universes of social and intellectual connections.
Can I see results of those old surveys?
Here are survey results from 2004,
http://www.blogads.com/survey/blog_reader_survey.html, 2005
http://www.blogads.com/survey/2005_blog_reader_survey.html and 2006
http://www.blogads.com/survey/blog_reader_surveys_overview.html.
How will you make money from this data?
We'll hope to recoup our expenses through the ads we sell for participating bloggers. We reserve the right at a later date to charge new bloggers
who sign up for the survey or to charge advertisers for custom views of the data.
Can any blogger participate?
The more the merrier. If too many bloggers participate or folks behave stupidly, we reserve the right to limit participation.
