The blogosphere is doubling every six months and is now 60 times bigger than it was three years ago according to the latest report by David Sifry of the blog-tracking service Technorati. Sifry said 1.2 million blogs are updated each day, and about 55 percent of those who start blogs are still posting three months after their inception.

“That’s an increase both absolute and relative terms over just 3 months ago, when only 50.5% or 13.7 million blogs were active. In other words … blogging continues to grow as a habitual activity.”

The chart below shows activity peaking around high-profile events. Notice how the level of activity around the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami of 2004, a seminal event in establishing the influence of blogs, is now dwarfed by the conversations around events as relatively mundane as the Super Bowl.

New Voices: The Institute for Interactive Journalism, aka the J-Lab, has announced 10 new winners (out of 185 applicants) for its New Voices grant aimed at spurring citizen journalism. The winners list is a source of ideas and inspiration. This program debuted in 2005 so you can read progress reports from the prior year’s winners. The J-Lab will offer a new round of grants iin February 2007 offering $12,000 in first year funding and the possibility of $5,000 in the second year.

Just in rhyme: One of my recent postings, Blog Rhymes with Slog, came to the notice of Jim Desmond, from the United Kingdom, who maintains a blog dedicated to verses. He posted the following as a comment and I share it here:

The Net, what is it ? A Godsend or a curse.

A highway of salvation, or an electronic hearse.

The line, a fine one, has it now been crossed.

Is privacy and decency a thing forever lost.

A wealth of information, brought through your screen to see

But whats the price for knowledge, nothing in this life is free.

Is someone out there watching , judging choices that you make

Callibrating the statistics based on journeys that you take.

Do the pages that you visit pose an underlying threat

As you innocently navigate this wonderous internet.

Maybe its just paranoia as I see my pages loaded

Or maybe not, it may be just the way to see us all bar coded.

Tom Abate
MiniMediaGuy
‘Cause if you ain’t Mass Media, you’re Mini Media