Blogging Growing Fast in Japan

Posted on April 20, 2005

The Blog Herald reports that a Netratings Japan study has found 1 million blogs in Japan. The article from the Asahi Shimbun explaining the Netratings study also says that 15 million people in Japan have been "adding comments" to blogs one a month. However, this seems highly unlikely since later this same article states that:

According to estimates by the market research firm NetRatings Japan Inc., about 14.95 million Web users accessed blogs on sites provided by one of the 14 major Internet service providers, like Rakuten and Nifty, at least once in February from home computers.

If 15 million people in Japan are accessing blogs each month then it is incredibly unlikely that every single one of them (15 million) is commenting on blogs like the article previously stated. Comments are used on blogs in the U.S. but a recent study found that of all the people the read political blogs only 7% bother to leave a comment.