The folks over at Technorati have posted some pretty amazing statistics about the State of the Blogosphere. Over the past five months, the number of blogs they’ve been tracking has doubled to more than 14.2 million worldwide. Their number crunchers project the number will double again by the end of the year.

A huge total like that is one thing but I think the more important stats are that just over half of those blogs are "regularly updated" and 13% are updated weekly. Which means the web is littered with sites that have been abandoned by their owners. Which is not a criticism – just an observation.

Tomorrow, Technorati plans to release some statistics on posting volume, which they note "is a better statistic to track the growth of blogging". Those numbers will probably show sharp growth as well, reinforcing the idea that blogs have moved way beyond the experimental stage.

The big unknown in all the numbers is where blogging (and all the off-shoots like podcasts) is headed. It will be fascinating to watch this media evolve.