@donncha and @micheleneylon tweeted about the stats of the blogging technology behind this year’s Irish Blog Awards, organised by Damien Mulley. It got me thinking about the stats of the software used by all those short-listed in the blog awards. Here they are!

Blog Software

First up are the overall stats. A resounding win for WordPress (both hosted, and self-installed). WordPress is by far the more popular choice, with Google Blogger/BlogSpot a distant 2nd. Between the 2, they’ve pretty much wrapped up Irish blogging (that are award-winning, anyway).

Blog Hosting

Next, just over one third of bloggers use free blog hosting services offered by Google’s BlogSpot/Blogger and WordPress.com, with the majority preferring to install the software on their own servers, or hosting accounts:

Other stats

Other, bordering on silly, stats include:

• 65% of short-listed WordPress installations are out of date, not including WordPress.com hosted blogs, obviously! 85% of Winners are out of date.
• 15% of short-listed WordPress installations hide the version tag in the headers (that WordPress ask that you leave intact). 8% of winners hide it.
• There are no 2 same versions of MovableType installed amongst the short-listed
• The only category where all the blogs are of the same type is Best Newcomer – Sponsored by Teamworkpm.net, and all of those blogs are out of date (with 1 having hidden version info). So the newcomers are choosing WordPress, but not keeping it up to date.
• Best Music Blog – Sponsored by DownloadMusic.ie have the best record for up-to-date WordPress versions (a WordPress.com hosted blog is automatically up-to-date), whilst Best Technology Blog/Blogger – Sponsored by Bitbuzz and Best Newcomer – Sponsored by Teamworkpm.net have the worst record.
• Only 15% of the short-listed are on .ie domains. 20% of winners are on .ie.

Installed Blog Hosting

Finally, Blacknight are the big winners. They’re the most popular host, by far, of self-installed blogs, amongst the short-listed. They’re also joint-favourite hosts for all of the short-listed, including free blog hosting services and self-installed blogs.

Take out free blog hosting services (like WordPress.com and Blogger/BlogSpot), and Blacknight are clear leaders:

Summary

WordPress and Blacknight are the winners, in technology terms, of the Irish Blog Awards ’09.

Note: the sample size is 100. There were 19 categories plus 1 overall winner (source: IWA Finalists Blog Post).

The raw data is in a Google Spreadsheet here.

Any other metrics required?