When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?

In a blatant attempt to impress the graph-loving Captain Capitalism, I am including this bar graph, which I found at the story I linked earlier (okay, here):

Commentary from Gallup:

To put blog readership in context, the December survey found that checking online for news and weather is done regularly by 72% of Web users. Fifty-two percent regularly shop online, 40% pay bills, and 28% play games. At 20%, blog reading is on par with downloading music and participating in online auctions such as eBay...
It is important to note it's not just blog readership that suffers from anemic growth: Americans' likelihood of doing most of the other online activities has not changed over the past two years. As reported in a Feb. 6, 2005, Gallup news article, of the nine activities measured in December 2003, the only notable differences are modest increases in the percentages using the Internet for making travel arrangements and paying bills, and a slight decline in the percentage using instant messaging.
Furthermore, the percentage of Americans who use the Internet to any degree has not changed during the past three years -- roughly 75% of U.S. adults say they use the Internet on at least some occasions.

The story also notes that readership is skewed to the younger generation, who might only be visiting My Space or something like that. Not that I want to sound like a blog snob, but come on.

Obviously, the raw numbers don't tell the whole story. Michelle Malkin might not have the same viewer numbers as the TV show Survivor, but she and other powerful bloggers are able to get the ear of policy makers, and blogs are able to steer the coverage on some news stories. Gallup recognizes this:

Of course many bloggers will argue that the influence of blogs is immeasurably greater than their readership statistics would suggest because of the disproportionate influence they have on opinion leaders, political insiders, and modern news media. That may be true, just as it may also be true that, by providing a competitive and handy marketplace for discount and used goods, online auctions such as eBay -- used regularly by only about a quarter of Web users -- are making a mark on the broader worlds of e-commerce and retail shopping.

I think they just compared AtlasBlogged with eBay.