Honolulu Ranked Fifth Bloggiest

Honolulu is the nation’s fifth largest “blogging market,” according to the results of a survey released today (PDF) by the consumer shopping experts at Scarborough Research. The firm says 12 percent of adult Oahu residents are bloggers, which they defined as adults who have “read or contributed to a blog within the past 30 days.” That puts Honolulu just behind Seattle and San Francisco, and ahead of Dallas, Washington D.C. and Atlanta. That also means there are supposedly 84,071 bloggers on this island. I must be hanging out in the wrong neighborhoods.

The top “blogging markets” (and the percentage of people identified as bloggers in each) are as follows:

1. Austin, TX (15 percent)
2. Portland, OR (14)
3. San Francisco/Oakland/San Jose, CA (13)
4. Seattle/Tacoma, WA (13)
5. Honolulu, HI (12)
6. San Diego, CA (12)
7. Dallas/Fort Worth, TX (11)
8. Columbus, OH (11)
9. Nashville, TN (11)
10. Colorado Springs/Pueblo, CO (11)
11. Washington, D.C. (11)
12. Atlanta, GA (10)
13. New York, NY (10)

In its release, Scarborough showed bloggers lots of love.

“Bloggers tend to have a different relationship with the Internet than the average user,” notes Gary Meo, the company’s senior VP for print and digital media services. “Given that they are contributing to the content of the Internet itself, it’s not surprising that bloggers are more advanced online than your average Internet user, and more tech savvy overall.”

Scarborough claims that eight percent of all American adults are bloggers.

Thanks to the survey’s rather liberal definition of a “blogger,” and the fact that “blogging” could technically include stuff published on MySpace and other social networks, I suppose the high numbers aren’t too surprising. But I’d say I’m lucky to find 13 percent of a given audience who simply know what a blog is, let alone people who have “contributed” to one.

At least Scarborough is a genuine market research firm, giving its rankings of bloggiest cities much more legitimacy than the less convincing numbers put out by Outside.in earlier this year. Outside.in put Boston, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh at the top of their list, whereas Pittsburgh ranked dead last and the other two cities didn’t make the top ten with Scarborough.

P.S. Scarborough? Since you’ve proven the value of marketing to blogs, please start a blog. I mean, a PDF? Really?