The Frogosphere

OK, sorry for the headline. Couldn’t resist. Newswatch India says:

The French distinguish themselves, both statistically and anecdotally, ahead of Germans, Britons and even Americans in their obsession with the personal and public journals of the Internet age.

60% of French Internet users visited a blog in May, ahead of Britain with 40% and little more than a third in the United States, according to Comscore, an Internet ratings service.

Likewise, French bloggers spent more than an hour in June visiting France’s top-rated blog site, far ahead of the 12 minutes spent by Americans doing the same and the less than three minutes by Germans, according to Nielsen/NetRatings, a sister company to the television ratings giant.

More than three million Internet users, or more than 12% of those online in France, have created a blog, a study released in June by the ratings agency Médiamétrie found.

“You cannot be elected president of France without a blog,” said Benjamin Griveaux, director of Web strategy for Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a former finance minister and current member of Parliament who in 2004 was among the first politicians to start a blog.