There are now a whopping 100 UK trade union related blogs in the TIGMOO.co.uk blog directory, so I thought I’d do a little analysis of them, and see what it tells us about the state of union blogging.
It’s niche…
There’s a long tail working here (even though we’re several stops into Zone 6 of the UK blogosphere’s long tail already). Only 67% of blogs posted in the last 8 weeks. In a few cases it’s because the purpose of the blog has ceased or suspended (a campaign that’s over, or a GS who’s moved on, leaving a big and still useful archive), but often it’s because that person or group doesn’t really have a lot to say.
As you move up the activity scale, the numbers shrink quickly – 32% post weekly, 16% twice weekly, 10% three times a week, and only 3 blogs post on average daily (the characteristically prolific Writers’ Guild of Great Britain Blog, ToUChstone blog, and Labour and Capital).
It’s nerdy…
Whilst the most common blogging platform (blogger, with 54%) is in the majority here, there are a surprising number of minority systems and self-hosted blogs (25% are self-hosted), suggesting a number of people coming at blogging from a techy perspective. As a WordPress fanatic, I’m glad to see a good proportion also using ‘the one true blog’ – boding well for network building amongst union blogs via trackback.
blogspot 47%, wordpress.com 22%, wordpress.org 9%, Moveable Type 6%, Custom system 6%, blogger self-hosted 4%, Drupal 4%, Typepad 1%, Livejournal 1%
(And btw for any bloggerers out there thinking of making the jump – you picked a great time – WordPress 2.7 is just out, and very nice!)
It’s not going away…
The number of blogs on the list has been accelerating over 2008. Most of the closed-down blogs weeded out of the list also seem to be the older inactive ones, and a lot of newer people are sticking in there. Hopefully this is partly due to the existence of aggregator networks like TIGMOO (or Bloggers4Labour for Labour supporting blogs). It can be pretty demoralising keeping a small blog going when there’s no evidence people are appreciative of your efforts. A few dozen referred users and the odd comment can go a long way in keeping up morale until a blog can stand up on its own and maybe get more confident in their own voice. There are quite a few union blogs out there who aren’t in the network too, so if you know any, give them a nudge to get in touch.