Phony numbers nothing new online

One of the questions I am asked most when speaking to groups not familiar with blogging or with the press - and yes, there is overlap - is how many blogs and how many bloggers. My answer is that I have no idea...and neither does anyone else. There are numbers out there of many millions, even tens of millions, but those figures generally come from people with a vested interest in reporting the largest numbers possible. I tend to view the "data" as hype intended to scare up money from VCs. Mostly, I think it misses the point of what blogging is all about and it just an attempt by people who don't understand blogging to put in terms they can understand - comparing it to print circulation or TV ratings.

Carl Bialik does a pretty good job shining some light on the utter lack of transparency with supposedly sophisticated data reporting. As you will see, the "data" is either coming directly from companies looking to promote themselves or outsiders with no direct access to the core information. In others words, the "data" is useless.