Dave Sifry has published the second of two great posts about the State of the Blogosphere. This one highlights the number of posts over time, and Dave interestingly links spikes in the number of posts to key news events. Here’s the first post as well, which demonstrates the number of new weblogs being created (or at least the number tracked by Technorati which is highly indicative).

UPDATE – Here’s the third in the series which discusses the A-List and the long tail:

As the chart above shows, the most influential media sites on the web are still well-funded mainstream media sites, like The New York Times, The Washington Post, and CNN. However, a lot of bloggers are achieving a significant amount of attention and influence.  Blogs like bOingbOing and Instapundit are highly influential, especially among technology and political thought leaders, and sites like Gizmodo are seeing as much influence as mainstream media sites like MTV.com.
…

This also has implications for enlightened marketers and media
companies. There is power in the conversations going on around you, and
not necessarily from the places that you’d ordinarily expect. Companies
that work in conjunction with the trends going on in the long tail:
e.g. fostering peoples voices, listening to and incorporating their
comments and feedback, and fostering a community have a tremendous
opportunity awaiting them.

Although marketers have for a long time tried to reach hub users and connectors, and devoted much of their marketing dollars to doing so, now there is a way to reach audiences in the long tail more cost effectively. Dave has a chart which shows that while the A-lIst is assuredly influential, so are the other bloggers who link to one another in micro-communities. Now marketers can reach into those communities and impact them in a way which was not possible or economically viable before. This is great news for any company with a niche product or service.