While Technorati has counted the 10.000.000th blog, Suw is wondering if blogging has become mainstream.

Ten million is a lot of blogs. That makes blogging a mainstream activity. The only trouble is, it doesn't look mainstream unless you're slap bang in the middle of it, and even then the disconnection and contradiction between the simultaneously solitary and social nature of blogging obscures understanding of our position within both the blogosphere and the world at large. In reality, blogging is mainstream, but it still feels fringe.

I have been thinking about the same issue recently. I have spent the last week driving back and forth Northern Italy, meeting people, making presentations, speaking at conferences and going to parties and, as usual, my topic is blogging and social software.

My feeling is that, sometimes incredibly, blogging is not mainstream, at least not here.

I have been talking with PR people, politicians, programmers, enterpreneurs, all people who should not only know about but already be blogging because it would have a major impact on their activities. Still, most of them hardly knew what a weblog is, most simply think that it's about personal web sites and cats pictures.

There is still a lot of evangelization to do, and the articles that from time to time slip on the mainstream media are not doing much to make people aware of what is going on.

Maybe it's simply a critical mass issue: there are not enough bloggers yet. Most people (I mean regular people) don't know any blogger, they do read about blogs from time to time but they have no reason to care.

10 milion is a lot but not enough. Most probably when we will reach 100 million the world will be a different place. And it will not take that much time to get there.