世論 What Japan Thinks

On the 27th of January, japan.internet.com, in conjunction with goo Research, published their 23rd survey on blogging. 1,076 people from all around the country and of all ages completed the internet-based questionnaire. 42.3% were male, 3.4% teenagers, 24.4% in their twenties, 38.0% in their thirties, 24.4% in their forties, and 9.7% fifty or over.

See also the recent story from Mutant Frog to understand the Japanese blogosphere a bit better. I find it interesting that over 70% have had a trackback, but less than 40% have made one. I wonder how these figures compare with other countries? Mutant Frog suggested that the Japanese blog world is mostly ignorant of the world outside its borders. Are many of the bloggers also blogging purely for themselves? Of course another factor is that people may not be aware that their blogging platform automatically trackbacks any links.

From the last survey a month ago the percentage being aware of the term “blogging” increased 0.1% to 95.5%, representing just one more person learning the term. 78.2% had seen someone else’s blog, leaving 17.4% who know the term but haven’t seen one, or seen one but not known it was a blog! The style of blog that people read regularly was once again the general daily life format at 41.3% of blog viewers chosing to read one (347 people), with 30.8% with no one particular preference, and next was music or film blogs at 17.1%.

34.3% of the total sample size said they had created a blog, and 28.6% hadn’t yet, but wanted to, an increase of 2.3% from last month. Of these 369 bloggers, 19.0% hosted a blog on goo, 18.2% on livedoor, and 16.8% on Rakuten.

Now some tables:

Q1: Have you received a trackback on your own blog? (Sample size=369)

Yes	70.7%
No	29.3%

This figure is up one percentage point from last month’s survey.

Q2: Have you made a trackback to another person’s blog? (Sample size=369)

Yes	38.2%
No	61.8%

When asked if they would pay 200 to 300 yen for extra features or larger capacity for their blog, 78.0% said they would want the blog to be free; however, 3.5% said they were already paying to blog.

Unfortunately, the figures do not explicitly mention the usage of hosting services.

Q3: Do you want to use an affiliates scheme? (Sample size=369)

Already using one	20.1%
Definitely want to	30.4%
Want to	25.2%
Don’t really want to	10.6%
Don’t want to at all	5.7%
Don’t know	8.1%

Last month’s survey suggested that the number already using an affiliates scheme has dropped 5.3%, which does seem to be a strange statistical hiccup.

Finally the 677 people who are either bloggers or want to be bloggers were asked to select their three key features for a blogging platform. Top was simple to make at 74.4%, next was easy to understand operability at 51.7%, then 35.8% chose freedom to customise the layout.