Press Releases, Blogs Outstrip Trade Journals as Info Sources

Today, market analytics firm Outsell issued a release summarizing a survey of 7,000 professionals in corporate, government, healthcare and academic settings. The most startling results:

• Press releases have overtaken trade journals as the top information source for knowledge workers, followed by trade journals and publications, reference books, academic journals and textbooks.
• The average respondent to Outsell surveys is reading nine blogs. (!!!)

Feel like you're spending more time just keeping up to speed? The survey indicates users now spend an average of 12 hours per week on information-gathering tasks such as searching, up from an earlier high of 10.9 hours.

The study compared users' needs and behaviors "now" (using data gathered from November 2005-February 2006) with previous findings (based on data gathered from September 2004-January 2005).