There is a Reuters story doing the rounds which concludes that young bloggers are losing interest in traditional blogging and even things like Twitter and rather sticking to social networking sites such as Facebook.

I thought I’d put in my two cents on this topic because it is something I find quite interesting to follow.

First up it is very important that the Reuters article talks about teens and their interest in blogging. You have to take that in context – I know my daughter likes to visit sites where the content is pro-active and developed for her – unlike blogs which are user generated.

Does that mean that blogging is going out of fashion? I don’t think so.

Pew Internet and American Life project who conducted the survey have focused on the developed American market. Internet there is cheap and accessible.

Flip that around and look at high growth places like Africa (SA has about 10% internet penetration), China, Russia, India, Brazil, Iran, Mexico – internet penetration is tiny but growing fast. Specifically in terms of mobile internet.

We also are in the midst of a shifting global economy which is likely to see small business starting to come through again as the traditional workforce battles to add capacity.

That is millions of entrepreneurs across the globe who are going to seek a web presence and many of them will be boot-strapping their businesses meaning that they will be looking for free tools to give them exposure.

Blogging is one of these tools.

Very short conclusion – while the stats are saying one thing , they need to be taken with a pinch of salt in the bigger economic picture.