世論 What Japan Thinks

Recently (how recently is not stated!) goo Research published this survey on blog awareness and usage in Japan, their 19th survey in their series on blogging. 1,042 Internet users aged from teens to their 50s were surveyed, with 58.83% (uggh, what’s with the two decimal places? I’ll round to one for the rest of this story) of the sample women. The following results were obtained:

Q: Within the last month, have you looked at someone else’s blog?

Yes	75.4%
No	18.9%
Don’t know what a blog is	5.7%

The viewers percentage has tripled since their first survey last April and the don’t knows have decreased from almost 41% first time out.

Q: Within the last month, have you posted a comment on someone else’s blog?

	All	Male	Female
Yes	25.4%	22.2%	27.8%
No	74.6%	77.8%	72.2%

Q:Have you made a blog yourself?

Yes	27.2%
No but I want to try sometime	33.3%
No, and don’t plan to	32.2%
Don’t know what a blog is	7.3%

The number not knowing what a blog is has increased! Perhaps people paniced at this question and realised they didn’t really understand things after all?

There now follows a large table describing what blogs people use, but rather than reproduce the whole lot, the highlights from the sample of 283 bloggers are livedoor leading at 17.7%, down from 23.4% last time (last month?); goo at 16.2% down from 17.7%; and Rakuten at 15.2% from 15.6%. Yahoo! and not listed others are the only gainers, 2% and 4% respectively.

One reason for more losers than winners is that the question allows multiple answers. The last time the average blogger used just under one and a half services; this time it is just under 1.4 services, suggesting either people are keeping less blogs or moving their blogs to a single provider.

Q: About how often do you update your blog? (Sample size=283)

Daily or so	21.9%
Twice or thrice a week	26.9%
Once a week	13.8%
Twice or thrice a month	14.1%
Once a month	5.6%
Once every two or three months	6.7%
Less than once every six months	11%

Q: Has your blog received a trackback? (Sample size=283 I think)

	All	Male	Female
Yes	68.2%	72.6%	65.5%
No	31.8%	27.4%	34.5%

On the other hand, only 33.9% have sent a trackback to another blog.

Q: Do you use an affiliate (cash-for-clicks) program? (Sample size=283)

I participate in one already	16.6%
I definitely want to join one	26.5%
I want to join one	25.1%
I don’t really want to join one	14.8%
I don’t want to join one	6.4%
Don’t know	10.6%

Finally, bloggers and those who wanted to be bloggers were asked what were the three most important factors when selecting a blog service to build a blog in. Of the 630 respondents, the top three answers were “Easy to make” at 77.5%, “Easy to understand management system” at 59.0%, and finally “Freedom of layout” at 37.1%. Strangely, I thought, magazine recommendations was right down at the bottom, less than 1% selecting it as a key factor.

This page at HotLink (or whatever the official English title is) has the results of a survey that seems very dubious to me.

Q1: Do you understand “blog”?

Yes	92.2%
No	7.8%

Oops, alarm bells are ringing! According to The Register, around the start of the year 62% of USA-based internet users did not know what the term meant.
I therefore suggest that this survey is not based on a random selection of users, but somehow heavily biased towards bloggers. Let’s look at the sample used then.

Sex:

Male	49.5%
Female	50.5%

Occupation:

Employee	47.5%
Self-Employed	4.9%
Full-time housewife	23.3%
Part-timer	11.7%
Student	2.9%
Others	9.7%

Age:

20-29	28.2%
30-39	37.0%
40-49	21.3%
50-59	11.6%
60+	1.9%

Oops, a definitely young person oriented survey, with perhaps a larger than average number of employees. With that pinch of salt taken, let us proceed with the other questions.

Q2: Have you ever used a blog-only search engine?

Yes	22.3%
No	77.7%

Q3: Do you think you’ll try using a blog-only search engine in the future?

I want to try to use one	54.4%
I don’t think I want to use one	45.6%

Q4: Have you made use of blogs or net-based word-of-mouth to gather information?

Yes	61.2%
No	38.8%

Q5: For what purpose have you used blogs or net-based word-of-mouth to gather information?

Companies	14.3%
Products	68.3%
Politics	4.8%
Arts (includes actors?)	39.7%
Current affairs	23.8%
Business information	11.1%
Music, etc entertainment information	31.7%
Others	23.8%
No answer	0.0%

Q6: Regarding your answers for Q5, which blogs or net-based word-of-mouth gathered information was usable (highly trustworthy)?

Companies	7.9%
Products	52.4%
Politics	3.2%
Arts (includes actors?)	14.3%
Current affairs	12.7%
Business information	7.9%
Music, etc entertainment information	15.9%
Others	22.2%
No answer	0.0%

Looks like people have major trust issues with the web, which is good, I suppose, since there’s a lot of nonsense out there! It’s interesting that the others category information was taken to be the most reliable – I wonder what that was?

Q7: In the coming general election do you think blogs will have influence?

They will	52.4%
They won’t	47.6%

Q8: In relation to the coming general election, do you think you want to consult blogs or net-based word-of-mouth?

I want to consult it	2.9%
If it’s valid information I want to consult it	62.1%
I won’t consult it much	14.6%
I won’t consult it at all	20.4%

Q9: In the future, do you think blogs or net-based word-of-mouth will influence elections or public opinion-forming?

Yes	72.8%
No	27.2%

Q10: In the future, do you think blogs will become an effective means of information gathering?

Yes	84.5%
No	15.5%

Sigh, once again blogs are being overestimated by the general public. I share The Register’s disdain for them as an effective medium for anything other than massaging the ego of the writer, especially when opinions are being expressed. The first thing I always do when reading a new blog is wonder what is the writer’s angle. Most blogs end up in an incentious ring of mutual back-slapping and cross-linking, where truth is represented by the number of hangers-on you can attract, all hoping to bask in some reflected glory. This ring of cross-linking also has the effect of gumming up Google, promoting ideas not based on the quality of the content but the quantity of the fan-boys.