Analysys in Beijing has issued its research on the number of registered blogs in China.:

According to Analysys International’s study, China’s blog market is evolving from the user cultivation phase to rapid growth phase although the business model is still immature. Most blog service providers are trying to attract more users by proactively developing new products and launching featured services. By the end of Q3 of 2005, the total registered users had reached 33.36 millions, more than twice compared with the user number of 14.75 millions by the end of 2004.

The involvement of large portals such as Sino Blog and MSN Spaces and some instant messaging service providers like Tencent is the main reason to drive the rapid growth of user numbers. Meanwhile many blog service providers are trying hard on business model innovation. When most of the bloggers enjoy the free service, some high-end users showed their acceptance of the paid VIP services, mobile blog service and paid blog space. Q-zone of QQ, Buluo of Netease and Blogcn becomes the top 3 blog service providers in Q3 2005

I spoke with Analysys a couple of weeks back on blogs for an article. The 33 million statistic, and the market share held by Q-zone and Netease, should be viewed with this in mind:

• The QQ and Netease numbers are inflated as they represent, as Analysys states, ‘registered’ blogs but not necessarily active bloggers. As well, active bloggers in China often change servers.
• There are a lot of abandoned blogs out there, and there are many blogs that are registered but may consist of nothing more than a post saying ‘hello.’
• There are probably 100-130 internet users in China… far less than one-third of them blog.
• This is also likely true for the English-language blogosphere. Consider, of 21 million blogs Technorati tracks - three of them are mine - one not updated since February 2003 and the other idle since early October.

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