I’m a little slow on the uptake, several other sites have noted this, but I still think it’s cool…plus I caught the gunk and was down for the later part of the weekend. Even so – I know folks are going to read this because Portland LOVES it’s blogs. That’s right – oh yeah – Portland is the #2 Blog Capital of the World! Or at least the United States – but that’s the same thing isn’t it? (Insert sarcastic jingoistic laugh here.)

Yep, only Austin, TX – which shares a number of other similar traits as us – has more bloggers and active blog readers than Portland. 14 percent of all Portlanders are in this group – compared to 8 percent nationally.

It’s not surprising really, the other top cities are San Francisco and Seattle, Honolulu and San Diego…all places that are well known for being tech savvy, young, educated…people known as ‘early adopters’ in the marketing research world of Scarborough – the company that did the research. I lived and breathed Scarborough research in my first job out of college and trust this info to be pretty darn accurate.

Depending on whom you talk to, blogs are important sources of information for many people – or a bunch of pretentious folks who like to hear themselves talk. I (of course) like to think that it’s the former, but studies like this will help legitimize blogs as a true source of communication for those that are still unbelievers. This is the research that is used by media companies around the country to show their potential advertisers who’s reading/watching/hearing their product – and while the numbers of people who read newspapers or watch TV are of course going to still be considerably higher – numbers like this are pretty darn significant.

And it’s pretty cool to be in one of the cities leading the revolution.