BlogWorld Expo [SOTB] & The Status of the Medical Blogosphere

During my stay in Singapore from October 9th-16th there were 2 other great events, one of them  being the Blogworld Expo, the  World largest Conference on Blogging in the Las Vegas Convention Center. As a matter of fact, I would never have the opportunity to go to such a place, because I’m blogging in my spare time and although it has many spin-offs for my work, I would never have the resources and the time to go there. So, it was with a little jealousy and envy that I followed all those cheerful tweets from my colleague medbloggers. They apparently had a lot to talk about, -also outside the context of the meeting. I even understood that Bongi came all the way from South Africa.  And I can’t say the video below eases the pain 😉 :

Vodpod videos no longer available.

more about “Scenes from Blog World Expo 2009 and …“, posted with vodpod

Image of Kim McAllister

It was the first time during the Blogworld Expo there was a medblogging-track. Thanks to the effort of Kim McAllister of Emergiblog. She posted a kind of a *rant* that there was nothing for medbloggers at two events. Seeing this, one organizer of Blogworld Expo commented: we have a place for you if you want to come. Johnson & Johnson were willing to sponsor, and MedPage Today offered an additional sponsorship. Below is an interview with Kim as well as with another well known blogging nurse, Gina Rybolt of Codeblog. In this interview “the conversation turns to why they blog, how they manage to do it without compromising their patient’s privacy and how they wish marketers and pharma brands would approach them.”

Rohit Bhargava who interviewed both nurses also interviewed the famous medical blogger Kevin Pho of KevinMD about why he blogs, what results he has seen and the future of the medical blogosphere the future of Medical Blogging. He makes clear why it is important for doctors to blog. However, there is one major obstacle for busy physicians, namely: TIME!

Want more information an/or pictures on the medblog-part of the conference, please see:

• KevinMD : Scenes from Blog World Expo 2009 and the future of medical social media.
• Kim of Emergiblog: Many posts, i.e. BlogWorld/New Media Expo – The Exhibited, The Uninhibited! and One For the Medblogger History Books and Baby Got Back….to Blogging! and Post Blog World Post
• Doctor Anonymous, BlogWorld 09: HIPAA & Blogging
• Rob Lamberts (Musings of a Distractible Mind), Medical Bloggers Frolicking at Blogworld
• Ramona Bates (Sututre for a Living), BlogWorld Expo 2009
• Paul Levy, Going virtual @ BlogWorld
• Bongi (Other-things-amanzi) Fabulous Las Vegas
• Kerri (sixuntilme): BlogWorldExpo: Medical Bloggers Make Their Debut.

The opening keynote of the Blogworld Expo was delivered by Richard Jalichandra, CEO of Technorati, showing some highlights from their annual study following the growth and trends in the annual State of the Blogosphere. The report was released over five days. (See Techcruch for presentation and short explanation ; the entire report is available at Technorati)

What I found most interesting:

• In Social Media the content is the conversation.
• There is a rising class of “professional” bloggers.
• But still Hobbyists represent 76% of all bloggers
  (I have some problems with the division in ‘professional bloggers’ and ‘hobbyist’ though, since professional bloggers are those regarded as “earning some money” and hobbyists are regarded as those that don’t. I think there should at least be 3 main groups: those blogging as a profession (earn money), those blogging as an expert (mostly) in their free time (professionally) and those writing about their hobbies, children etc (hobbyists).
• The hobbyists blog for fun and to express themselves
• 15% is part time professional, they blog to supplement their income and to share their expertise
• 9% is self-employed, 4% is corporate (see Figure below)
• Of the professional bloggers 2 thirds are male, 16% are 18-44, are more effluent and educated than the general population and the hobbyist bloggers (hmmm that also pleads against medbloggers not belonging to this group)
• 73% of all bloggers use Twitter vs 14% of the general population (but nr 1 reason is to promote their blog)
• 26% of bloggers who also use Twitter say that the service has eaten into the time they spend updating their traditional blogs – though 65% say it has had no effect.
• on average only .83% of the page views come from Twitter referrals.
• Advise to succeed: be passionate.
• Bloggers believe that politics (57%) and technology/business (44%-20%) are among the fields most impacted by the blogosphere, and that they will continue to be transformed by the blogosphere going forward. Health was only mentioned by 5%.

I wonder where/whether Science/Health/Medbloggers fit in? Are they underrepresented in the study? Or do they belong to a minority anyway? See here a discussion on Twitter (catched with QuoteURL)

Related articles by Zemanta

• State of the Blogosphere 2009 is Out (buildabetterblog.com)
• 2009 State Of The Blogosphere: The Full BlogWorld Presentation (techcrunch.com)