China expects 100 million bloggers to be writing about their life, love, angst and inspirations on the country's cyberspace by 2007, according to a recent report.
The report, dubbed a Blue Paper on Media Industry, was written by the research center of media management under Tsinghua University, one of China's most prestigious universities.
The paper said there will be more than 60 million bloggers in China by the end of this year.
The word "blog" was one of the most searched words on the Internet in China last year, the report said. A survey by Baidu.com, a major Chinese search engine, shows that there are 36.82 million blog sites in China that are kept currently by 16 million people.
Zhang Xiaorong, strategy development director of "Bokee", one of the first blog service suppliers in China, said his company adds about 100,000 blogs a day.
"The expected 60 million bloggers would account for more than half of China's 110 million netizens," said Zhang.
The Blue Paper said 658 companies specialize in providing storage for blogs, and 330 each are host to more than 1,000 registered users.
Star blogs, written by celebrities, attract most eyeballs. Sina.com, a leading website portal in China, is host to one of the most successful blogs written by local film star and director Xu Jinglei who updates her on-line dairy everyday. It took Xu's blog just 112 days to become the first in China to receive more than 10 million viewers, almost equal to the "click rate" of medium-sized websites.
Xu's blog immediately drew the attention of advertisers who had long sought ways of making a profit from the blogging phenomena. However Xu and Sina.com had not signed a contract so the two sides had difficulty trying to figure out how to share revenue.
"Star blogs will not burn for long," said Keso, a professional blogger. He believes no one star can bring long-term prosperity to blogging. "Bloggers can not yet be called professional in terms of profit".
Still, people cling to the idea that a blog can make them money. One website called "How Much is My Blog Worth" will even do an on-line evaluation. It showed Xu's blog is worth US$10 million.
A report by Internet Society of China in February showed nine percent of bloggers write everyday, 29 percent write once to three times every week, and 35 percent write four to six times weekly.
The Blue Paper said although the industry has invested heavily into blogs none of the blog service providers are making profit.
In the future, blog service providers may charge individuals for downloading and on-line viewing, or publish the content in traditional media forms. That's what "Bokee" did by publishing a collection of writings from well-known bloggers.
(Xinhua News Agency May 6, 2006)
