State of the Entrepreneurial Blogosphere 2011‪.‬

INTRODUCTION The Pew Internet & American Life Project has conducted an ongoing series of research projects and published reports on Internet usage. In a summary memorandum released in January 2005 it was stated that "62% of internet users do not know what a blog is" (Rainie, 2005). However, as this paper will discuss: that landscape has changed significantly over the years with an explosive growth in the number of blogs, bloggers, and users. Perhaps the relevance to small business and entrepreneurship scholars can be suggested by a quote in Entrepreneur magazine that stated "[blogging has] gone beyond fad to become a full-fledged Internet phenomenon" (Kooser, 2002). Blogging has been further characterized as a "paradigm shift of how we disseminate and communicate" (Cunningham, 2005). "[Blogs] can be started with very little, and very inexpensive, editorial content yet are capable of exerting extraordinary influence" (Madden, 2005).