Ebuzzing

Overblog, our sister company, launched its new blogging platform earlier this week at BlogWorld. Top U.S. tech blogger, Robert Scoble, became the platform's number one professional blogger advocate when he announced on Facebook this Wednesday that he will be migrating his blog to the new Overblog platform.

BlogWorld is the world's largest social media conference and trade show, playing host to new technology and innovations launches on a yearly basis. 2012 was no different, with Overblog making a big splash at the conference by launching an innovative blogging platform and presenting findings from its latest study, The blogging secrets of 5,000 influencers from around the world. The new blogging platform offers bloggers visibility, consistency, and exposure by bringing their fragmented social and blog posts from across the web into one single real-time stream. 

Jason Falls, named by Forbes as one of the top 10 most influential social media personalities, joined the Overblog team in co-presenting the study findings to BlogWorld attendees. Here are some of the key take-aways from the study, which has explored the blogging behaviours of 5,000 influencers from the U.S. and Europe:

• On average professional bloggers run 3 blogs, whilst part-time bloggers run 2
• 20% of European bloggers publish in 2 or more languages, compared with 6% of American bloggers
• 43% of American professional bloggers' activity is linked to companies they have worked for, in comparison to 11% of European bloggers 
• American bloggers are more experienced than European bloggers, with 37% having blogged for 4-7 years. Only 26% of European bloggers have been blogging for as long
• The majority (94%) of American bloggers use their real identity for blogging, whilst only 32% of European bloggers share this. A reluctance to share information about their personal lives is apparent with European bloggers too, as 40% would never disclose such info (compared to just 15% of American bloggers)
• Across the U.S. and Europe money is not a motivator for blogging. In the U.S. the main motivator is the ability to share their knowledge, whilst Europeans are most motivated to blog out of passion for a particular topic
• 3 out of 10 bloggers (American and European)perceive updating their blogs frequently as the ultimate driver of traffic, with professional and part-time bloggers (in Europe) spending roughly the same amount of time updating their sites
• Whilst on-the-go, bloggers in America prefer to publish posts on Twitter, whilst in Europe Facebook is preferred
• 16% of professional bloggers in the U.S. earn more than $3,000 per month, compared to just 5% of professional European bloggers
• In America, 52% of bloggers are happy with the level of solicitation they have from brands/companies, whilst in Europe the same percentage have never been contacted by any brand/company.

To find out more about the state of the blogosphere in 2012, check out the full study here.

We're really excited to start using the newly launched blogging platform and hope you are too! Follow Robert Scoble's example and migrate your blog today.