Yesterday's Chicago Tribune had a story about blogging, written by Steve Johnson, with some interesting statistics:

• 175,000 new blogs are created each day (Technorati)
• Of the 57 million blogs that Technorati watches, one in eight add new content weekly.
• The primary topics for blogs are "my life and experiences" (37%) and politics (11%) (Pew Internet project - www.pewinternet.org)
• 12 million American adults have blogs; 57 million read them. (Pew Internet)

The story also mentions that SixApart (the company that brought us LiveJournal, Movable Type and TypePad) is introducing Vox.com, a new friends and family-oriented blog tool. Vox.com will integrate with YouTube, Flickr, Photobucket, and Amazon as well as audio and video options. It also lets bloggers set different levels of privacy such as friends only, family only, or public.

For us to grow as bloggers it's helpful to step out of the Rain once in awhile and take a look at the blogosphere from a different perspective. Technorati, Pew Internet, and Vox.com provide three views that can help us understand how blogs are being used and how we can improve our own content.