Online blogging communities have included far more than blog authors. Readers, commenters, linked writers, family members, local residents, and social-network users have all formed part of the participation picture. The historical U.S. statistics below track those roles from 2003 through 2010, with one broader online-community measure from 2025. Because the surveys measure different populations and behaviors, each percentage is kept with its original period and audience.
Contents
- Blog readership and reach
- Commenting and direct interaction
- Blog authorship and publishing
- Cross-blog ties and audience relationships
- Community-issue blogging and civic participation
- Youth and social-network blogging participation
Blog readership and reach
The earliest figures show blog participation expanding quickly among U.S. internet users. In 2003, 11% said they visited blogs written by other people. By November 2004, 27% said they read blogs, representing about 32 million American blog readers. In 2006, 39% said they read someone else’s blog, equivalent to about 57 million American adults. These figures come from Content Creation Online, The State of Blogging, and Part 5. Audience.
The 2008 survey separated current, lifetime, and daily reading. In spring 2008, 33% of U.S. internet users said they currently read someone else’s blog. A larger 42% said they had ever read one, while 11% said they read blogs on a typical day. The lifetime measure therefore captured a wider audience than current readership, and the daily figure described a narrower routine behavior. These distinctions are reported in New numbers for blogging and blog readership.
| Measure | Population and period | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Visited blogs written by others | U.S. internet users, 2003 | 11% |
| Read blogs | U.S. internet users, November 2004 | 27% |
| Read someone else’s blog | U.S. internet users, 2006 | 39% |
| Currently read someone else’s blog | U.S. internet users, spring 2008 | 33% |
| Ever read someone else’s blog | U.S. internet users, spring 2008 | 42% |
| Read blogs on a typical day | U.S. internet users, spring 2008 | 11% |
Teen readership was also substantial. In 2006, 49% of U.S. online teens said they read other people’s blogs. Reading varied with online frequency: 59% of teens who went online daily read blogs, compared with 39% of teens who went online several times per week. Age differences were visible as well: 40% of online teens ages 12–14 read blogs, compared with 58% of those ages 15–17. These findings are from Teens creating content.
Commenting and direct interaction
Reading often connected to visible participation. In 2003, about one-third of U.S. blog readers said they posted to or commented on the blog entries they read. By November 2004, 12% of U.S. internet users said they had posted comments or other material on blogs. The two measures are not identical: the first describes blog readers who commented, while the second describes all internet users who had posted.
Blog settings and blogger behavior provide another view. In 2006, 87% of U.S. bloggers allowed comments on their blogs. Comment availability varied by age: 94% of bloggers ages 18–29 allowed comments, compared with 84% of those ages 30–49 and 69% of those ages 50–64. The source for these figures is Part 5. Audience.
Commenting was also common across blogs. In 2006, 82% of U.S. bloggers said they had posted a comment to someone else’s blog. The share was 91% among bloggers in multiple-author blogs, compared with 78% among single-author bloggers. That difference associates multi-author settings with more reported commenting, but it does not establish why the groups differed.
Participation extended beyond general blogging. In September 2009, 25% of U.S. internet users said they had commented on an online news story or blog item about news they read, according to Part 5: News gets personal, social, and participatory. In 2010, 11% of U.S. internet users who read a government agency or official’s blog said they had posted comments on that blog, as reported in Part Two: Government engagement using social media and the government participatory class.
A later measure concerns online parenting communities rather than blogs specifically. In 2025, 40% of U.S. parents who had ever visited online parenting communities said they had posted or commented about their own parenting experiences. This statistic comes from How Parents Use Online Communities and should be read as an online-community participation measure, not as a direct estimate of blog commenting.
Blog authorship and publishing
The publishing side of participation was smaller than readership. In 2003, 2% of U.S. internet users said they wrote a weblog or online diary, and about 10% of U.S. weblog writers said they updated their blog daily. By November 2004, 7% of U.S. internet users said they had created a blog. In spring 2008, 12% said they had ever created or worked on their own blog, while 5% said they blogged on a typical day. The 2003 and 2004 results are reported in Content Creation Online and The State of Blogging; the 2008 measures appear in New numbers for blogging and blog readership.
Among U.S. online teens, 28% said they blogged in 2006, up from 19% in 2004. In the same 2006 source, 8% of U.S. adult internet users said they had ever created a blog. Teen blogging also varied by demographic group: 35% of online teen girls blogged, compared with 20% of online teen boys. Among teens from households earning under $50,000, 35% blogged, compared with 24% from higher-income households. These comparisons are from Teens creating content.
Daily online use was associated with blogging among teens. In 2006, 32% of U.S. teens who went online daily kept a blog, compared with 23% of teens who went online several times per week. This is a comparison between survey groups, not a measure of how often an individual teen updated a blog.
Cross-blog ties and audience relationships
Blogs connected authors to audiences beyond the comment box. In 2006, nearly 60% of U.S. bloggers said other bloggers had noticed their blog through links or discussions. Family members had noticed the blog for 52% of bloggers. Coworkers, colleagues, or bosses had mentioned or recognized the blog for 35%, while 20% said members of their local community had paid attention.
Some blogs also reached formal public and media audiences. In 2006, 10% of U.S. bloggers said public officials, political campaigns, or politicians had noticed their blog. Nine percent said their blog had been mentioned by news media. All of these cross-audience measures come from Part 5. Audience.
Bloggers’ own descriptions of their readership show a blend of personal and unknown audiences. In 2006, 49% believed their readership was mostly people they personally knew. Thirty-five percent believed their readers were mostly people they had never met, and 14% described their readership as a mix of personal contacts and people they had never met. The categories describe bloggers’ beliefs about their audience, rather than independently measured visitor identities.
Community-issue blogging and civic participation
Community topics formed one part of online participation. In 2010, 14% of U.S. internet users had read a blog dealing with community issues during the previous 12 months, according to Neighbors Online. The share was 16% among online adults ages 18–29, 15% among those ages 30–64, and 9% among online adults ages 65 and older.
Geography and race also showed different reported levels in that survey. Among online residents, 17% of wired urban residents had read a community-issue blog, compared with 11% of online rural residents. Community-blog readership was 18% among online Black adults, 14% among online White adults, and 13% among online Hispanic adults. These are survey-group comparisons for 2010 and do not describe all residents or all forms of community participation.
| Community participation measure | U.S. survey population and period | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Read a community-issue blog in the prior year | Internet users, 2010 | 14% |
| Read a community-issue blog in the prior year | Wired urban residents, 2010 | 17% |
| Read a community-issue blog in the prior year | Online rural residents, 2010 | 11% |
| Joined an online community-issues group in the prior year | Social-network users, 2010 | 8% |
| Used Twitter or another status-update service to follow neighbors | U.S. adults using such a service, 2010 | 14% |
| Belonged to a neighborhood email list, listserv, or forum | Online adults, 2010 | 7% |
Other channels complemented community-issue blogs. In 2010, 8% of U.S. social-network users had joined an online group focused on community issues during the previous year. Fourteen percent of U.S. adults using Twitter or another status-update service used it to follow their neighbors. Seven percent of U.S. online adults belonged to a neighborhood group email list, listserv, or online discussion forum. These measures are also from Neighbors Online.
Youth and social-network blogging participation
For U.S. teens in 2006, blogging and social-network participation overlapped strongly. Forty-two percent of teens who used social-networking sites said they blogged. Seventy percent of teen social-network users said they read other people’s blogs, compared with 25% of teens without social-network experience. Seventy-six percent of teen social-network users said they had posted comments to a friend’s blog on a social-networking site.
The same period shows that participation included broader forms of creation and reuse. In 2006, 39% of U.S. online teens said they shared personally created content such as artwork, photos, stories, or videos, compared with 22% of adult internet users. Twenty-six percent of online teens said they remixed material found online into their own creation. The supplied comparison for adults is 17% of online adults in 2007, so the two time periods should remain distinct.
Later social-network measures describe adjacent interaction rather than blog readership alone. In 2009, 86% of U.S. teen social-network users posted comments to a friend’s page or wall, 83% had added comments to a friend’s online photo, and 37% said they had joined groups on social-networking sites. These figures are from Part 3: Social media.
Taken together, the historical evidence separates several forms of participation: encountering blogs as a reader, publishing a blog, commenting on another person’s work, being noticed through links or offline relationships, and joining issue-oriented online groups. The percentages are not a single current participation rate. They describe different U.S. populations, behaviors, and measurement periods, with the strongest direct blog evidence concentrated between 2003 and 2010.