Well, well. A Guardian/ICM poll brings some unexpected news…

The extent of the personal publishing revolution has been revealed by a Guardian/ICM poll showing that a third of all young people online have launched their own blog or website. Millions of young people who have grown up with the internet and mobile phones are no longer content with the one-way traffic of traditional media and are publishing and aggregating their own content, according to the exclusive survey of those aged between 14 and 21…

The Guardian has a leader on the implications of this phenomenon.

Mary Meeker of Morgan Stanley claims that 27% of US internet users read Blogs.

CNET is claiming that there are “more than 14 million” blogs in existence and another 80,000 being created each day. It has now compiled the usual fatuous list of the ‘Top 100’ Blogs. Sigh.

More: From a report of a presentation by Dave Sifri of Technorati…

Technorati is tracking 18.9 million weblogs, and seeing a doubling in these numbers every five months.

70,000 new weblogs are created every day; about one every second. 55% of those bloggers appear to still be active 3 months later. About 8% of those blogs are spam.

Looking at use, Technorati are seeing over 1,000,000 blog posts every day, with clear spikes around newsworthy events.

High profile blogs like Boing Boing and Gizmodo have similar levels of attention to mainstream media sites such as Reuters and the BBC. Traditional media companies are now beginning to integrate blog content into their offerings, with the Washington Post and others announcing their entry into this space today.

The use of tagging in blog posts is increasing, with almost a third of posts today including at least one tag.

En passant… it’s funny how these numbers never quite match up. CNET has “more than 14 million” Blogs, with 80,000 being created every day, while Technorati is monitoring “18.9 million” and seeing a mere 70,000 new ones a day. Hmmm….