Already hailed as the word of year by Merriam Webster’s Website, blog readership skyrocketed 58 percent in 2004, according to a new study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. The study reports that 27 percent of Internet users in the U.S. say they read blogs, representing a 58 percent jump in readership from the 17 percent reported in February 2004. Pew Internet said that by the end of 2004, 32 million Americans were blog readers.The popularity of blogs is changing how Americans consume information online. The survey found that six million Americans now get news and information from RSS aggregators, which gather content from XML-supporting Web sites and blogs and display updated content for users. The number of people creating blogs also increased, but by a more modest number. More than one-in-ten Internet users, roughly 12 percent, say they have posted blogs or comments on other people’s blogs. Although blog readership gains in 2004 were substantial, a majority of Internet users still don’t know what a blog is, the survey found. The study said 62 percent of American Internet users didn’t know what the term ‘blog’ meant. Apparently, Merriam Webster could have told us that. However, Merriam Webster’s definition of blog, “a Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks provided by the writer,” doesn’t really capture what the buzz is about. The rise of blogs and their increasing power on the Web is due to the incredible ease and speed of publishing a blog post and the community created through links to other bloggers. This “blogosphere effect” isn’t easily captured in a dictionary definition or charted in a study, but all this attention is a good place to start. Technology Industry