Japanese spend the most time on blogs, says report

Internet users in Japan spent more time reading blogs than internet users in any other country around the world, according to a report released August 24 by digital analysts comScore.  

The report found that throughout June 2011 80 percent of Japan's entire internet population visited a blog site and the average user spent 62.6 minutes reading blogs. This was more than the time spent reading blogs by internet users in any other country and far ahead of second place South Korea, where internet users spent an average of 49.6 minutes reading blogs.

In an attempt to explain why internet users in Japan spent more time reading blogs than those in any other country President of comScore Japan Daizo Nishitani stated, "Blogs play a central role in Japan's Internet culture[...] Blogging has historically been a popular Internet activity, as the opportunity to interact anonymously appealed to many online users."

Data from Google owned Doubleclick Adplanner shows that in July 2011 the most visited blogging site in terms of unique users was Google's blogging domain blogspot.com, though picture blogging sites such as Tumblr are growing in popularity.

The top ten global markets for blog category usage in June 2011 according to comScore were:

01.   Japan (average minutes per visitor = 62.6)
02.   South Korea (average minutes per visitor = 49.6)
03.   Poland (average minutes per visitor = 47.7)
04.   Indonesia (average minutes per visitor = 33.1)
05.   Brazil (average minutes per visitor =32.5)
06.   Vietnam (average minutes per visitor = 30.3)
07.   Sweden (average minutes per visitor = 29.2)
08.   Malaysia (average minutes per visitor = 26.6)
09.   Portugal (average minutes per visitor = 24.8)
10.   Taiwan (average minutes per visitor = 24.1)