Dennis The Peasant: Such A Difference...

Spending lots of time and energy on grappling with complex real-world issues can be an unrewarding business, as many bloggers have discovered. That's because very often serious blogging about weighty issues is every bit as much work for the reader as it was for the blogger. Let's face it, for a lot of folks who consider themselves thought leaders or whatnot, that sort of thing is a no-no. They're under the impression they're thought leaders because they dick around at political blogs. Reality seems to be somewhat different, however, to the adults in the room...

So for all the hoo-ha about the superiority of the political blogger and his readership, it appears that neither seems to have actually demonstrated said superiority in practice. You really don't have to put in all that much time at any of the most popular political blogs - either Conservative or Liberal - before the simple-minded partisanship of both blogger and reader becomes obvious...It is worth noting that the real growth in the political blogosphere appears to be over. Despite whatever hucksters like Roger Simon might say about growth of readership, it is apparent that the political blogosphere's share of internet traffic is either static or contracting.

Dennis is talking about the USA here but much of what he says is equally applicable to the UK. He seems to be right about the reach of political blogs as well. Page views may be up but then so is the overall size of the potential readership. The best known UK political blogs are managing to reach about 0.001% of global users and their share is declining. One reason for that is their readership is around 80% UK based so they are not going to be picking up many extra readers from an expanding South American, say, or  Far Eastern user group.