Over at the internet marketing blog One Degree, Toronto-based online business guru Bill Sweetman writes about how a non-computer, non-tech, non-internet business is making use of a corporate blog. The article, titled Blogging with the Whales, covers the blog run by a New Brunswick company that offers whale-watching cruises. Bill writes:

The blog is maintained by Danielle, a marine biology graduate in charge of photographing, identifying and recording the whales and sharing that information with various marine research organizations. Danielle’s blog chronicles through words and photos (by Danielle) the recent whale sightings and had been updated earlier the day I first looked at the blog with photos of whales that had been spotted that morning.

I was immediately captivated by the near-immediacy of this information and the fact it chronicled the spontaneous nature of whale watching. The “Sightings and Updates” blog also demonstrated to me that Quoddy Link Marine really cared about whales and the environment, not just selling whale tour tickets. Thanks to their blog, I also felt one degree closer to the people behind this tour company than with those from any of their competitors.

If you're wondering if having a corporate blog can help your company attract new business, you might want to read the article.

According to a report on blogging released by the Pew Internet and American Life Project titled Bloggers: A Portrait of the Internet's New Storytellers [260K PDF], 8 percent of internet users -- that's about 12 million American adults -- keep a blog. An even larger segment of internet users, 39 percent, or about 57 million American adults, read blogs.

Among the report's findings:

• Here's what bloggers blog about:   
         
  • 37% of bloggers use them as personal journals
         
  • 11% blog about government and politics
         
  • 7% blog about entertainment
         
  • 6% blog about sports
         
  • 5% blog about general news and current events.
     
• 54% of bloggers are under 30, evenly split between men and women.
• Where bloggers live:   
         
  • More than half live in the suburbs
         
  • One-third live in urban areas
         
  • 13% live in rural areas.
     
• Bloggers are less likely to be white than the general internet population, which is 74% white. Of bloggers:   
         
  • 60% are white
         
  • 19% are Hispanic
         
  • 11% are African-American
         
  • 10% identified themselves as members of some other race.
     
• 52% of bloggers said that they are blogging for themselves.
• 52% of bloggers said that their major reason for blogging was to express themselves creatively.
• 50% of bloggers said that their major reason for blogging was to document and share personal experiences.

If you'd like to read the report itself, you can download both the report and the questionnaire used to make the report from this page.

If you'd like to read some of the reportage on the report, check out these links:

   
• New York Times
   
• Washington Post
   
• San Francisco Chronicle