Blogads ran a survey 17-19 May 2004, trying to get some data on blog readers. More than 17,000 people completed the survey; results are now online.

These self-reported data suffer the same weaknesses as early Georgia Tech surveys of WWW users. With that as a caveat, however, the data are interesting — whether viewed in the aggregate or by demographic (women, men, various political party affiliations).

A key question was “why do you read blogs?”

Respondents could choose multiple answers, and they did. Most chosen: “News I can’t find elsewhere” (79.7%) with “Better perspective” a close second at 77.9%.

Other results suggest that those regularly reading blogs do not represent the average American and I doubt it’s the average voter, either:

• More than 60% are over 30
• Only 21% are female — thus this sample (population?) does not accurately reflect the online demographic, which I believe runs about 50-50 male-female
• More than a quarter identify themselves as student, educator or computer professional, with the latter being the largest category at 11%
• A high percentage (20.6%) say that they subscribe to the New Yorker; the next most-subscribed to publication was The Economist (15.4% – not clear if this is print or online subscription)
• The group overwhelmingly gets most of its news from online media (54%) with print magazines and newspapers making up another 27%.
• Only 21% have their own blogs – which might begin to put to rest the myth that everyone who is interested in blogs is publishing one