Blogging moved over the past year from being the pastime of Internet-savvy youth to being an increasingly respected part of the online news mix. <\/p>\n
And, as blogging grows in popularity, so too do the tools to produce blogs, and the tools have become easier to use. Unlike the past where producing a sophisticated website required a wide range of skills today’s platforms such as WordPress, Blogger and TypePad are both more powerful than previous-generation tools while being more powerful.
There are essentially two types of blogs: Those that are provided fully-hosted by a developer such as WordPress and Blogger; and those that are self-hosted by organisations or individuals. <\/p>\n
When it comes to hosted blogs, reports suggest that Blogger.com is the most popular platform. Analyst ComScore released a study of UK-based blogs earlier this year which offers insight into which the most popular hosted blog platform is.<\/p>\n
The study of blogs in August, which tracked a total of 14.5 million blog visitors, found that the top blog platforms were: <\/p>\n
Blogger.com – 9 million visitors
WordPress.com – 4.8 million visitors
Six Apart Sites – 2.7 million visitors<\/p>\n
When it comes to self-hosted blogs, however, the numbers are a little different. In an earlier study by CMS Wire of the most popular blogging platforms on Technorati, WordPress trumped the lot with a healthy lead over second-place Movable Type. The review of the top 100 sites on Technorati showed that the top ten blogging tools were: <\/p>\n
WordPress – 34 sites
Movable Type- 16
Custom CMS- 11
Blogsmith\/Weblogs- 8
Gawker CMS – 8
TypePad- 7
Blogger\/Blogspot – 6
Drupal- 5
Plone – 1
Scoop – 1<\/p>\n
Many of the technorati top 100 sites are relatively professional operations which is probably why the majority are self-hosted operations. Further down the list the trend is likely to change but as blogging become more mainstream the growth in self-hosted blogs is likely to grow. <\/p>\n