A week or so ago, I participated in a study of blogger behaviour commissioned through Edelman/Technorati. Today, I was blown away by the results of this study.

I wasn't blown away because the results were a surprise, I was blown away because of the consistency of the findings to my very own behaviour as a blogger.

Hi-lights:

• Almost as many bloggers post to create a record of their thoughts (31.55%) as they do to become a visible authority in their field (33.86%) ["We're writing ourselves into history one blog post at a time" Weinberger]
  
  
• Many bloggers have never been contacted by companies or PR reps, but 87% of them discuss products on their blogs.
  
  
• However, it wouldn't really matter, because on a scale from 1-10, PR trust rated a 4.5 and company rep trust a 5.5.
  
  
• In fact, when looking for product information, an overwhelmingly large amount of bloggers trust other bloggers first (62.85%) before they trust messages from the companies themselves.

Thanks Technorati/Edelman! You just justified my entire cult of Cluetrain!

Tags: cluetrain, technorati, blogstudy