I’m pleased to announce a new report that I expect will shortly by the buzz of the blogosphere, from comScore Networks: Behaviors of the Blogosphere: Understanding the Scale, Composition and Activities of Weblog Audiences (PDF).

I say I’m pleased because I had a hand in it. Actually, this thing has been many months in the making. I first discussed the idea of analyzing blog reader behavior using comScore’s 1.5 million research panel of web users who have given explicit permission for comScore to track them everywhere they go online. Anyway, we finally got it done, and I think everyone with an interest in the scope of the blogosphere will find it interesting.

uhA few comments on the methodology, as I’m a research geek after all. We started by examining "top 100 blog" and "blog ecosystem" lists from sites including Technorati, Daypop, BlogStreet, Bloglines and others, most notably TruthLaidBear, the entire list for which is over 14,000 blogs (I see down at teh level of Insignifant Microbes it’s now more than 34,000 blogs, but for our analysis we went just beyond 14,000 deep).

Based on those thousands of blogs, comScore identified the 400 biggest blogs and blog hosting networks. We further categorized those blogs into various (non-exclusive) categories, including Political, Tech, Hipster, Women Authored, Business and so forth. comScore then looked at all the members of its panel who visited those sites during Q1 2005.

Just to get bloggers all wet, we actually produce a list of the top 25 blogs in the (English-language) blogosphere, by unique quarterly visitors (Q1 2005) and by number of visitations (i.e., user loyalty). It’s sure to generate controversy, as the top bloggers by traffic and visitation are not necessarily the ones that show up at the top of everyone else’s lists by number of in-bound links (or at least they’re not in the same order), but that’s just a question of understanding comScore’s methodology: actually tracking of hundreds of thousands of blog readers and making statistically sound projections accordingly.

Perhaps the more important findings, however, will be those about the size and demographic and behavioral make-up of blog readers. Highlights include:

• 50 million U.S. Internet users visited blog sites in the first quarter of 2005. That is roughly 30% of all U.S. Internet users and 1 in 6 of the total U.S. population
• Five hosting services for blogs each had more than 5 million unique visitors in that period, and four individual blogs had more than 1 million visitors each
• Of 400 of the biggest blogs observed, segmented by seven (nonexclusive) categories, political blogs were the most popular, followed by "hipster" lifestyle blogs, tech blogs and blogs authored by women
• Compared to the average Internet user, blog readers are significantly more likely to live in wealthier households, be younger and connect to the Web on high-speed connections
• Blog readers also visit nearly twice as many web pages as the Internet average, and they are much more likely to shop online

Gawker Media and Six Apart co-sponsored the research. Gawker’s publisher Nick Denton shares his own thoughts on his blog.