Duncan Riley> A little late this month with the monthly blog count due to the overwhelming responses of many readers with contributions of figures, coupled with emerging reports in the press to compile. As always I’ll qualify that the Blog Count is about counting blogs, not active blogs or bloggers. There a lots of new countries this month but I’ve limited the list to get it published, it’s going to take me a few more weeks to get a bigger list together yet again. Tomorrow I start next months list and there are plenty of extra countries to survey and some good leads I need to run through the online translator. As always if anyone has any stats they’d like me to add email me, phone me (if I’m not online voice mail is always on) (347)427-9299 or leave a comment.

Conclusion for July: there are now at least 70 million blogs in existence with 63 million blogs having been created on 8 leading blog hosting sites that host 1 million or more blogs alone.

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Blogs influence the spending habits of tight-arses who shop at thrift stores, according to a new study.

The study of 14,000 people (a serious number) by Ohio firm Big Research of Dollar General and Dollar Store customers, two stores that sell items for $5 and under, found that blogs influenced spending habits in up to 11% of cases in particular product categories.

In a profound and earth shattering find, the study concluded that overall, for Dollar Store customers, blogging has greater influence than Dollar General bloggers on their purchase, a figure that’s sure to get people changing their blog posting habits.

(via Steve Rubel/iMedia Connection)