February 04, 2003
Quantifying the Heights of the Blogosphere, or How to Avoid Work on a Saturday
Inspired by Frank J.'s unscientific poll of 62 of his self-selected blogger-readers (more here, here and here) and his very scientific use of digits in calculating an average blogger age of:
34.1612903225806451612903225806452 years of age,
I determined to add a small degree of "science" to the Blogosphere, surveying the 177 sites on both sides of the Myelin blogging ecosystem (i.e., both most-linked and most-linking) previously discussed here to see if I could verify IMAO's result. Of these 177, I was able to easily obtain (or estimate based on year of undergraduate degree) the age of 53 (or 30 percent of the) top bloggers. While this sample may well be biased (due to these bloggers' willingness to publish this personal information), I expected it to be less biased than a survey of readers of 23-year-old Frank J.'s juvenilia (one of whom is me, frequently). The youngest in my sample was Oliver Willis at age 25. (IMAO doesn't have enough outgoing links to make the sample, ahem.) Ben Domenech is surely younger, but I couldn't locate enough information to determine his specific age. I won't name the oldest, in the vain hope that he will someday visit this site.
For what it's worth, the average age for my sample of 53 webloggers is (IMAO-like) 36.9622641509434 and the median age is 36.
The full distribution is given here:
I shudder to think that the next study might be Blogger Adjusted Gross Income.
(Of course, if you restrict it to income from blogs, you'll have a heck of a lot of zeroes.)
Posted by: CGHill at 04:10 PMMr. Hill:
Ooh, thanks -- thought food. AGI might be a little tough to come by, but professional averages could be interesting. And, as you imply, blog income would probably be a waste of time to study at this point.
Frank J.:
I know, I know. IMAOlanches (and Quicklanches) have their costs. More later.
Russell:
Get yourself on the MBE, and you'll register (especially since I now have your age). You'll have to beat Ben Domenech and Frank J., though, for which I'll no doubt pay, too.
Posted by: Oscar Jr. at 04:11 PM
