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Blogsboro with the emphasis on "boro."

Well, we're behind Raleigh again! A report from Scarborough Research about the percentage of people who read or contribute to blogs puts Greensboro at 7% behind Raleigh's 8% but well ahead of Charlotte's 5%. Worse, we're a notch behind the national average of 8%.

Austin, Portland, San Francisco and Seattle are at the top with 13%-15%. The top cities for bloggers have tech savvy and youth in common.

Demographically, bloggers are young and hail from middle class families. They are 66 percent more likely than the national average to be between the ages of 18 and 34. Fifty percent of bloggers are part of a household that has children under 17, as opposed to 41 percent of the total population. Bloggers are 20 percent more likely than the national average to have an annual household income between $50k and $100k per year.

I dunno. Maybe not young, but certainly middle class. With ConvergeSouth, perhaps we've moved into into a more expansive realm of digital use, in which blogging is simply one tool among many.

Comments (8)

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Roch101 said:

Actually, the report put Greensboro/High Point/Winston-Salem at 7%.

cara michele said:

good add, roch. i wonder what the percentage would be with just greensboro.

I'm quite sure Greensboro makes up the bulk of that number.

Roch101 said:

Which is why I think "regionalism" is not so great for everything. Some things, sure. But Greensboro is the leader in many things among the places in our "metropolitan statistical area" -- things that get watered down or missed completely when we are grouped with the hinterlands.

Beau D. Jackson said:

A report from Scarborough Research about the percentage of people who read or contribute to blogs puts Greensboro at 7% behind Raleigh's 8% but well ahead of Charlotte's 5%. Worse, we're a notch behind the national average of 8%.

The folks from Scarborough forgot to poll this 66 year old middle class man, discrimination in its purest form!

Sue said:

I don't know what the percentages are or what they mean (or how they measure) but from ConvergeSouth unscientific visual polling, there are a lot of interested over 45 year-old potential bloggers. We were asked for a blogging 101 session (btw, fine with me; someone just has to volunteer to lead it) and that surprised me. I thought (perhaps wrongly) that those interested in starting a blog had already done so.

JR, why not bring back TIUG and make it blogging 101? You could combine it with showing people how to comment on LTE, N&R blogs, stories, and all that as well. (The pain is deciding on a free blogging platform to 'suggest.') But if your IT folks could hook up some guest wifi for the meetings, people could blog in real time during the meeting. TIUG was a huge community event for a long time and attracted those folks who are your readership. (And then send them to ConvergeSouth 2008!)

You know, the High Pointers would say, there goes that arrogant Greensboro again, saying we drag them down. :)

Even assuming that the other cities are weighing GSO down, what do you think Greensboro alone would register? 10% maybe?

I'm blanking, Sue, on TIUG.

Sue said:

TIUG=Triad Internet Users Group. The N&R used to sponsor it; a monthly meeting in your big room where a presenter engaged with a topic of newly-online interest. This was a while ago; topics ranged from "how to attach a picture to email" to "how to build a web page" from browser-based software, to "how to stop spam" (this was a long time ago). I helped with the group for a long while (getting presenters, perhaps ConvergeSouth training?) and for a long while it had good attendance. I think it was Tuesday nights at 7 p.m.

It was cheap to run; engaged an audience; required a laptop, projector & internet. Thought you might want to revive it and include WiFi. The downside was it required an N&R staffer to open and close the room, get said laptop and log the group on with someone's account. Now that we're more sophisticated, tech-wise, that should be easier to do and at the same time bring your audience to the big building on Market Street.

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