Heavy bloggers take over the web

Heavy bloggers account for 84 per cent of all the time spent on blogging sites

Heavy users of US blog sites are significantly more likely than the average internet user to consume news and entertainment online.

The latest Segment Metrix from research house comScore revealed that heavy bloggers, who total about 20 per cent of all bloggers, account for 84 per cent of all the time spent on blogging sites.

Given that blogs can often be described as informative and entertaining, it is not surprising that heavy users of blog sites are more likely than the average internet user to consume news and entertainment content online, according to comScore.

They are also significantly more likely to consume content at politics and general news sites, and also consume a disproportionate amount of content on entertainment news, humour, movies and photo-sharing sites.

Heavy bloggers are heavy consumers of content at social news ranking site Digg and Hollywood gossip site PerezHilton.com, the company said.

Heavy bloggers consume more than three times as much content on Digg as the average internet user, and also exhibit well above average consumption of content at news sites including CTVGlobeMedia, DrudgeReport, HuffingtonPost, Salon.com and ABC News Digital.

On the entertainment side, heavy bloggers skewed towards content at PerezHilton.com and CollegeHumor Network.

Heavy usage of web hosting sites Rapidshare and Megaupload.com also suggest that heavy bloggers are tech savvy and "online do-it-yourselfers".

"As blogs continue to grow in quality and audience size, traditional and non-traditional advertisers are increasingly putting their online ad dollars towards this group of consumers," said Jack Flanagan, executive vice president at comScore.

"This highly informed, tech savvy and entertainment-oriented consumer segment is consistent with the profile of an 'influencer' which is, of course, a particularly attractive audience to reach."