Here are a few interesting facts on blogs from Perseus Development Corp. which randomly surveyed 10,000 blogs on 20 blog-hosting services:

Perseus reports that there are currently 31.6 million hosted blogs that were created on services like BlogSpot, LiveJournal, Xanga, and MSN Spaces. There were 10 million created in the first quarter of 2005 alone. The 31.6 million is expected to grow to 53.4 million by the end of the year.

Perseus notes that the leading blog hosts are: BlogSpot, which has 8 million accounts, LiveJournal, and Xanga. It categorizes MSN Spaces as a "challenger" which launched in 14 languages and 26 markets and had 4.5 million accounts at the end of the first quarter. TypePad, Blurty, Greatest Journal, and AOL Journals were labeled as "upstarts," and Dead Journal and Diaryland/Pitas as "niche players."

Perseus describes TypePad as the most successful of upstarts, and says that AOL plans a new blogging service for ****s.