Joho the Blog
An Entry from the Archives

Simple answer to: "Question: Why are there fifty times more weblogs in Poland than in Spain since they have the same population? "

Because no one really measure the spanish weblogs.

One point that leads to that conclusion is the fact of comments quantity/blog quantity; which makes me think that spanish bloggers make one comment per post... or that they are not splitting this study btween spanish bloggers and spanish-SPEAKING bloggers.

This point would leave all Latin America outside of the weblog map.

That's what I told the Spanish guys.. Blogs exist - but the can't find them...
In Poland we have the possibility to count them, because they are concentrated on free servers with free accounts. Spanish speaking blogs are probably more spread.. perhaps we should wait for the "final" results of Idle words?

The speakers said that their study was of all Spanish-speaking blogs, not just those in Spain...which makes the results either more distressing or less credible.

well, thats exactly my point. Do you really believe that within Spain and LatinAmerica exists just the 4th parto of weblogs that exists in ONE country?

Actually, I quite believe it.

Do you really believe that within 15 countries (Sorry but i dont actually know the exact amount of spanish speaking countries) are only 2000 weblogs?

Henry: just tell us where they are, what areas we overlooked, and we'd be quite happy to add them to our study. In fact, idlewords lists 5000 of them, which means that there are more, but we have yet to find them.

Actually, I would guess that a high amount of the population of those 15 countries do not even know how to read and write, less so to connect to the internet. So, yes, I believe that without problem. Around 5000 seems alright to me.

At least one country I have personal experience with, Ecuador, has a high rate of literacy up and down the social scale, and is relatively familiar with the net: even the poor have found that it is the cheapest convenient way to keep in touch with relatives who have fled the country's current economic depression, but try to maintain family ties from Minneapolis, or Manchester, or Madrid. But I suspect most Ecuadorians would rather spend blogging time in face-to-face relationships, even if they have the necessary cash to support such a habit.

Really, most of my friends would see blogging like nonsense or boring. Messenger kind of peer to peer communication has lot more success here. We have 12 snowless months per year, and lots of cheap bear (lately not so cheap) ;)

The interesting thing is that everybody is saying that our list is not accurate, but nobody is pointing to more complete lists....

Pedro, can i feel a little bit offended by your disrispect of Latin America?

Do you want to compare the total number of net users in spain and in the "15 countries where people not even know how to read and write"?

I live in Argentina, where our alphabetization rate is about 96% does it look like we "not even know how to read and write"? God... start defending your work not just attacking people who distrust it.

I was including Spain in my comment (I did not bother to count the number of countries, I should have). I know a lot of people that can not read or write in my own backyard. No disrespect was intended. Sorry it that was the impression I gave.

I came here to find out what is being said about the horrific event of March 11. I am very disappointed not to have found a bunch of blogs from Spain - in English! I see that the last posting was Janukary 13. Wonder if anyone will see this!

I am actively looking for blogs from around Spain but it is not easy. Considering there is a large number of english speaking people that now have property in Marbella I would expect to see a few more. Alas we can only hope I guess