"It seems like every company has a blog section of its own, and is also interested in what the blogosphere is saying about it," said Paul Verna, senior analyst at eMarketer.

Word-of-mouth is still a powerful marketing tactic, and since influential bloggers are so effective at spreading the word about their likes and dislikes, blogger demographics continue to matter. So, excluding major businesses and splogs, who blogs now?

Although most researchers have noted a young skew to the blog audience, a BIGresearch study found that the average age of adult bloggers is actually 37.6. (see chart on left)

A Deloitte & Touche study of blog usage by age found a direct relationship: the younger the user, the more likely he or she was to read or keep a blog on a weekly basis. For example, 55% of millennials (ages 13 to 24) surveyed read a blog, and the percentages declined for every age cohort in the study until reaching just 16% for matures (ages 61 to 75).

Similarly, 35% of millennials kept a blog, whereas only 1% of matures did. The age groups in between—Generation X (ages 25 to 41) and baby boomers (ages 42 to 60)—fell between those two extremes.

With regard to the ethnicity of US adult bloggers, BIGresearch found that 69.7% were white, 20% were Hispanic, 12.2% were African-American and 3.7% were Asian. These percentages were essentially in line with the US Census Bureau's most recent estimates of the demographic breakdown of the US population, allowing for differences in methodologies, mixed-race respondents and overlap between Hispanics and individuals of other ethnicities.

Once a haven for techies, there are now blogs for everything from celebrity gossip to political commentary to the most mundane personal minutiae. By 2012, more than 145 million people—or 67% of the US Internet population—will be reading blogs at least once per month.

The number of people creating blogs in the US will also grow, reaching 34.7 million people by 2012—16% of the Internet population. By contrast, there were some 22.6 million US bloggers in 2007, a number that correlates to 12% of Internet users.

Buoyed by these massive levels of consumer engagement, US blog advertising will reach $746 million in 2012, up from $283 million in 2007.

Most likely, this program will result in unjustified and unnecessary audits.Payment-card reporting is another expensive bad idea from House Democrats. American taxpayers can only hope this extortion attempt fails, and that Congress passes AMT relief in a clean bill with no tax and regulatory hikes.

— Phil Kerpen is policy director for Americans for Prosperity.

Is Amazon Planning To Go Head-to-Head With PayPal?
Posted by Eric Savitz

Amazon.com (AMZN) has been aggressively rolling out a variety of Web-based services, including on-demand computing power and data storage. Could the company’s next move be to go after eBay (EBAY) subsidiary PayPal’s dominant franchise on online payments?

Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Derek Brown asserts in a research note this afternoon that Amazon “may soon launch a PayPal-esque Payments service for use by consumers and merchants across the Web, potentially siphoning growth and/or profit from eBay’s crown jewel.” Brown says that Amazon could launch such a service as soon as late summer or early fall of this year.

“We believe an Amazon Payments solution for use across the Web holds real promise,” he writes. Brown contends that Amazon “long-ago demonstrated that it understands (perhaps better than any company) the needs/wants of online retailers.” And he also says the company understands - maybe better than any company - the needs and wants of online buyers. “Coupling this pool of knowledge with its massive customer base, powerful technology platform and unique skills sets, Amazon.com may be among the best-positioned Internet companies to attempt to challenge PayPal’s growing dominance.”

Brown says taking on PayPal successfully would be no sure thing, but adds that it seems “equally foolish” to simply disregard the idea as just another PayPal wannabe. He notes that the company already offers a site called Amazon Payments that allows users to send money to any U.S. mobile number of e-mail address using credit card info on file with Amazon.com to fund the transaction. He also notes that the company already also offer Amazon Flexible Payment Services, “a set of APIs that allows the movement of money between any two entities.”

Brown also notes that Amazon.com job listings show a number of openings in the area of external payments; he quotes one of the listings as saying “there is incredible opportunity to further leverage our payment services assets.”

Meanwhile, Brown also contends that eBay may be readying a further tweak to its business model, with an additional reduction in listing fees combined with a hike in back-end success fees. He says the result in the long run would likely be more listings. But that’s a mixed blessing: he says it would creation an “even greater strain” on the company’s searching and finding algorithms.

Concerned about both the potential competition from Amazon in payments, and the disruption from a shifting business model, Brown today repeated his Sell rating on eBay, with a price target of $25. Today, eBay is up 16 cents, or 0.6%, to $28.97 . Amazon is off $1.06, or 1.3%, to $81.91.