Deep Jive Interests

Dave Sifry gave his usual “State of the Blogosphere” post some days back, and while it did discuss some details of the fastest growing segments of the blogosphere, it didn’t really do it justice I find.  He talks about a few specific numbers, but doesn’t have the benefit of being on the ground and speaking to the people who are actually in it.

Richard Edelman does.

And he’s been blogging about it this past week on his Speak Up blog — and he Brings It.

On China:

• Technology is the number one subject for Chinese bloggers
• Forums are even more important than blogs
• There’s a strong anti-multinational, anti-corporate voice in the Chinese blogosphere
• Mr. Edelman relates how the blogosphere rallied to a journalist’s defence in covering the Foxconn-Apple debacle and raised public sentiment in the journalist’s favour
• (here’s my favourite) The typical Chinese blogger is 30 years old, of modest means, venting resentments — Japanese companies are the #1 target.

On Korea:

• Blogging is huge in Korea — 7 million do it; 20 million are in social networks [aside: Cyworld boasts something like over 95% of 20-25 year olds ues their service ... now where's that reference?]
• On line media is exactly on par in terms of trust with traditional newspapers (in China they are #2 behind TV)
• Very, very few blogs in Korea ping Technorati — skewing the data from their service, because they’re obviously missing a giant chunk of the global blogosphere.

For specifics and the big name portals and their URLs, please check out Richard Edelman’s latest post, called Observations on Chinese and Korean Blogosphere’s”.  He might flog from time to time, but he also hits the pavement to provide some great observations that no one else has access to — which provide some great grist for the blogging mill.