Ever wondered what the typical blog reader looks like? A recent study by comScore (pdf) shows the “Scale, Composition and Activities of Weblog Audiences”. To sum it up, the average blog reader is young, wealthy and spends more time and money online than the average internet user.

Key findings include the following:

· 50 million U.S. Internet users visited blog sites in the first quarter of 2005. That is roughly 30% of all U.S. Internet users and 1 in 6 of the total U.S. population

· Five hosting services for blogs each had more than 5 million unique visitors in that period, and four individual blogs had more than 1 million visitors each

· Of 400 of the biggest blogs observed, segmented by seven (nonexclusive) categories, political blogs were the most popular, followed by “hipster” lifestyle blogs, tech blogs and
blogs authored by women

· Compared to the average Internet user, blog readers are significantly more likely to live in wealthier households, be younger and connect to the Web on high-speed connections

· Blog readers also visit nearly twice as many web pages as the Internet average, and they are much more likely to shop online

[Continue reading the study Behaviors of the Blogosphere (pdf)]