Techno-wrong-ti in Asia again?

Various posts today cover the report from blog index Technorati that Japanese is now the most common language on the Internet. Global Voices takes it as face value:

It will likely come as quite a surprise to the English-speaking world that the number one language of bloggers worldwide, in terms of number of posts, is not the “language of international communication”, as English is typically regarded. Nor, before the Chinese chime in, is it the language of the most populous state on the globe. According to the 2006 fourth quarter results of the State of the Live Web report issued quarterly by Technorati, a blog search engine which at last count tracks over 70 million weblogs, in terms of blog posts by language, English and Chinese in fact rank second and third, at 36% and 8%, respectively.

Edging out English for first place this quarter was Japanese, with over one-third of all blog posts — 37% — written in this language.

Over at China Herald, however, Fons Tuinstra takes issue with the report. He says:

Today it is Global Voices that has been put on a wrong leg as it believes Technorati statistics on what language is spoken on the internet. Japan wins, followed by English and then Chinese.

What is proves is that Technorati has a very good team in Japan that helps to register weblogs at the Technorati-server, while it does a poor job in China. To be noted you have to ping the Technorati-server. In China very few people see the need of pinging a service they have never heard off. It of course does not help the technorati-IP address is blocked in China.

It doesn't really sound right to us there is more blogging in Japanese than either English or Chinese but you never know. We commented on a similar question when Edelman released its report on blogging (also based on what sounded to us like dodgy Technorati data) earlier this year.