PC Magazine has named the folks at Blogger and Six Apart as its "people of the year", noting that "about 11 percent, or about 50 million, of Internet users are regular blog readers."

A recent study (PDF) found that "44% of [American] Internet users have created content for the online world through building or posting to Web sites, creating blogs, and sharing files."

The study goes on to explain:

"Who creates content? Content creators as a group are younger than the average American. However, in the Internet population, all age cohorts are equally as likely to create content. Content creators are more likely to be urban and suburban than rural, perhaps explained by the greater levels of broadband connectivity in urban centers than in rural areas. Content creators as a group are evenly divide between men and women and show similar racial and ethnic breakdowns as Internet users as whole. Content creators are likely to have higher levels of education – 46% have a college degree or more compared to 26% of all Americans. Income levels are also generally higher among content creators, with 31% living in households earning more that $75,000 annually, compared to 18% of all Americans who live in such households.

That's interesting in its own right. But these sorts of trends get really interesting when we think about the diffusion of these tools globally and throughout the civic sphere. That's where ideas like "Blogger Corps" and Global Voices Online could start to grab some serious intellectual traction.