Blogs not popular with the Dutch

On June 1 The Next Web Conference will take place in Amsterdam. The conference has grown into an international conference with leading speakers such as Tim O’Reilly (O’Reilly Media), Jay Adelson (Digg) or Marten Mickos (MySQL). Besides the special The Next Web Interview Teaser videos, there was a quantitative survey into the name familiarity, the use and the added value of Web 2.0, online networks and blogs among Dutch consumers. Some 1053 people were asked to fill out the survey on internet; so, it is a biased impression. The results of the survey are available on internet in Dutch (! It is an international conference) as a PowerPoint presentation, be it still in the Dutch language.

Not too many Dutch internet users do recognize the term web 2.0, despite the fact that the term is known since 2003, when Tim O’Reilly used it for the first time... In principle this is not surprising as web 2.0 is a multifaceted term, comprising, wikis, RSS, APIs, social bookmarking, mash ups and web based software. On the other hand the 40 percent of the respondents are active on online networks and half of them log in daily. The projection is that half of the Dutch population is daily online for at least 2 to 3 hours.

I will pay attention to the blogging results of this survey. In the Netherlands there are 800.000 weblogs, according to an estimate of Paul Molenaar, COO of Sanoma and CEO of Ilse media group, at Blognomics 07. Some 50 percent are using Web-log.nl, the ilse blogger service. This estimate concerns only Dutch language blogs and not blogs in another language originating from the Netherlands like this blog.

Here are some of the results:
- 6 out of 10 Dutchmen do not read blogs;
- of the blogreading Dutchmen 62 percent spend less than 1 hour on the reading of blogs.

It is interesting to read why people would read a blog:
- content is the most important factor for the reliability of the blog;
- the blogger is also a criterion for the reliability of the blog;
But no less than 31 percent says that reliability is not a criterion. But people like a well written blog (26 percent) and 14 percent hates spelling mistakes. Links to other reliable sites, references to sources. Surprisingly design is hardly an item (8 percent), while only 3 percent hate advertisements. The amount of comments, the amount of posts, trackbacks and the URL are not heavy weighing criterions for the reliability. The number of RSS readers is totally irrelevant. (These results are completely contrary to the famous rules of the big bloggers. Of course not many Dutch bloggers enjoy any popularity worldwide).

The vast majority of the Dutch population does not keep a weblog. Only 1 in 8 maintains a weblog, of which 3 percent has more than 1 weblog. 90 percent of the webloggers spent 2 hours or less per week on writing blogs, while 6 percent work more than 7 hours on writing their own blogs.

Looking at the results of this survey, one conclusion is clear: blogs are not popular with the Dutch. However how do you get 800.000 blogs?

Blogposting Number: 767

Tags: blogging