Blog, Blog, Everywhere a Blog

Blog. Blog. Blog. Blog. Blog.

Criminy, just the word is starting to sound like a Yoko Ono telethon.

The BBC ponders the role of blogs as they continue to proliferate like horny little bunnies. According to Technorati, there are more than 5 million blogs in existence, with a new one created about every six seconds. Pew Research indicates that blogs are read by 27 percent of Internet users, an increase of nearly 60 percent within a year's time. Pretty incredible.

Andrew Nachison, director of a U.S.-based think tank called the Media Center, tells the BBC, "We are entering one era in which the technological infrastructure is creating a different context for how we tell our stories and how we communicate with each other."

Motley Fool writer Selena Maranjian examines how the decline in newspaper circulation might be further exacerbated by blogs. "Have you stopped to think of the effect they (blogs) may have on newspapers?" she asks rhetorically. "Many blogs are silly, but many others are written by serious, thoughtful people, who offer a lot of information and food for thought. Economist Tyler Cowen at the MarginalRevolution.com blog predicts that 'mainstream newspapers will become less intellectual in their coverage, while (and because) niche options expand dramatically.'"

Those serious, thoughtful bloggers sure are mucking things up for the rest of us.

On that note, check out today's New York Times and its article on the cacophony of conspiracy theories and other oddities that are trickling from the blogosphere (dammit! I promised myself I'd never use that word!) in the wake of the tsunami.