Blogs and the private production of public goods

Blogs are a remarkable example of the private supply of public goods. The writers are highly motivated, and often highly intelligent. They produce opinion and commentary on just about everything, with remarkable speed and timeliness. Yet few of these authors are paid directly. They write either for love, or in the hope of converting their fame into profit. Well over four million blogs have been created.

Yet as we might expect, not all bloggers contribute much to the public good. To put it bluntly, many of you out there are slackers. Here are some results from a recent study:

Some highlights: about a quarter of all blogs created are abandoned after only one day. Men tend to abandon their blogs slightly faster than women do, while women are slightly more likely to create a blog in the first place. More than 90% of all blogs were created by people under 30 years old. The average active blog is updated only once every 14 days.

The summary remarks are from www.2blowhards.com.