Making Sense of Indian Blog Readership Stats

ET comes up with an astounding number for the number of blog readers in India. So far we have had many reports on the number of Indian blogs. The number is usually in the range of 40K – 100K. There has been no firm report on the kind of hits Indian blogs receive. Regular bloggers would be able to tell stories about the hardwork involved in building a loyal readership base of a few hundred / thousand readers per day. If we use that as a benchmark, one would realize that the total readership for Indian blogs would not be very high.

You are in for a surprise if you thought blogs are a metro, elite consumer phenomenon.

With almost 86% of the 25 million odd internet users in the country regularly checking out blogs (second only to e-mailing), nearly 59% coming from middle-to-low income group (essentially socio-economic class B&C ) and approximately half being from outside the top eight cities, blogging and internet have well and truly become a mass medium in India.

I would think twice before accepting the above number. This report puts the Indian blog readership at a little over 20 million. The report doesn’t define what they mean by regular reader. For all you know, it could be once every 3 months. Even that seems like a very high number. Let’s try to compare this stats with the US, where Internet penetration & PC ownership is generally on the higher side. This Sep 2005 report by research firm Pew Internet put the percentage of bloggers and blog readers at 27% of the Internet users. A figure in the high single digits could be a fair reflection of the current readership in India.