Ok I will confess that Jupiter didn’t exactly say that every single person would be blogging by 2010, I decided to paraphrase somewhat for the sake of a catchy title, and I’d say that it certainly works well. What the research company did actually say was that they believe that by 2010, 70% of all the Fortune 500 companies will have corporate blogs. Now as you well know I am a very passionate blogger and I would always recommend more and more people to come and join me, but even this prediction from Jupiter seems somewhat bold. 

Here is what they had to say on the matter:

“JupiterResearch, a leading authority on the impact of the Internet and emerging consumer technologies on business, reveals that 35 percent of large companies plan to institute corporate Weblogs this year. Combined with the existing deployed base of 34 percent, nearly 70 percent of all site operators will have implemented corporate blogs by the end of 2006”

Now this is where things get curious, especially as the brilliant Ross Mayfield and Chris Anderson of Wired and Social Text actually created a wiki to track the blog usage of those Fortune500 companies and actually found that just 6% of them were actively using blogs, I am no mathematician but 63% seems a might leap to make in just a couple of years. 

Toby Bloomberg of the brilliant Diva Marketing was also curious about what kind of research brought Jupiter to this ridiculously optimistic result, and he asked for them to respond to him in order to clarify, here is what they replied with:

“Information about JupiterResearch reports are available to accredited members of the press for free and clients. After looking at your blog link JupiterResearch has decided not to fulfill your request for more information since the blog is closely tied with your company that serves as a consultancy. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you this earlier, I didn’t realize that your company and blog were so closely affiliated. If you’d like more information about becoming a client or purchasing a report, please let me know.”

Ouch, Any backslapped as not being within those who have ‘need-to-know’ credentials, or perhaps Jupiter simply couldn’t justify this absurd prediction. 

My advice to Jupiter would be to first of all respect Toby, he is a very well known blogger and someone who deserves and was right to ask that question. Secondly you should really address the insights and the analysis which have brought you to making such an absurd statement which you knew would get press and finally it is vital that moving forward if you are going to have a crack at talking about blogging and social, you should probably have someone on your side who knows a thing or two about it, and you’ve clearly burned bridges with Toby now who would’ve been a wonderful acquisition.