Blog Growth Exploding

WASHINGTON – The founder of the blog-indexing service Technorati says he sees no letup in the growth of the medium.

Dave Sifry (search), appearing at this week's Web 2.0 conference (search) in San Francisco, said the number of blogs is doubling every five months, with 70,000 new Web logs launched every day. He said about half of all blogs are active three months after they start, and 15% are updated at least weekly. He counts 1 million postings a day.

Cnet's News.com has published a list of its 100 favorite blogs. "Blogs have become an important source of information, but the signal-to-noise ratio makes it hard to find the gems," the site explained. The Blog 100 list has nine categories including law and politics, open source, and software. The listing page at news.com.com also pulls in recent postings from its favorite Web logs.

Some Online PC Sellers Not in the Holiday Spirit

A study of customer experiences at 10 major Web sites selling computer equipment has found many of are not ready for the holidays. Based on their performance during the back to school season, Keynote Systems (KEYN) found "a general unpreparedness for the upcoming season." One in 12 customers visiting leading hardware retailer sites was unable to complete a transaction without errors, the firm found. The study included 10 Web sites and monitored their reliability and functionality during August and September.

Amazon.com (AMZN) received the highest customer satisfaction rankings from online consumers, but was edged out by Dell in terms of success in converting visitors to customers. Apple Computer (AAPL) was found to be tops for responsiveness and reliability of its site.

The value of search and comparison shopping cannot be underestimated, Keynote indicated. "Customers like the selection they find at reseller sites such as CompUSA and PC Connection (PCCC) , but like the guidance and comparison tools they find on manufacturer sites such as Dell (DELL) ," said Dr. Bonny Brown, director of research at Keynote.