eMarketer. The Last Place To Look?

Paul Verna, Senior Analyst, reported in eMarketer yesterday (October 16) that blogging has become mainstream. Here's what he says:

Blogging has become so pervasive and influential that the lines between blogging and the mainstream media have disappeared.

At first glance, this looks really important. The implications are huge... massive. Unfortunately, that is the end of it. Verna credits Technorati and Decipher for this momentous finding. In fact, Technorati CEO Richard Jalichandra is quoted:

“Blogs are now mainstream media. We’ve certainly seen that with the number of professional, semiprofessional and passion/enthusiast bloggers who are creating real media experiences. At the same time, you’re also seeing mainstream media come the other direction to add blog content.”

Okay, so what's your point? I am not aware of anyone, anywhere who has not considered blogging to be a part of the mainstream media since the turn of the millennium. Did you guys just figure this out?

Verna does share some comScore Media Metrix data indicating that blogs had 77 million unique visitors in the US in August 2008. Great, and TV has nearly 290 million unique viewers in the US (BTW, that represents an increase of 1.3% from last year).

What does this mean? I have no idea. I guess it means that we love our toys. We love TV. We love the Internet. We love video games. We love our iPods. We love blogs.

What am I missing here?