Blogging has been all the rage for a few years — with cover stories on major magazines, blogs about blogs, and some bloggers literally becoming credible media sources that rival legacy print and television brands.

Interestingly, there’s a trend that appears to have accelerated far faster and more dramatically than blogs. Online video. Take for example this report (via Google analytics) for the search volume on the term “blogs” vs. “viral video.” Don’t do an absolute comparison because these graphs don’t include actual volume details and they visually scale differently. But look at the trends. You’ll see that viral video (a term only recently part of our venacular) has grown exponentially since last year with a dip in the summer – potentially seasonality. And the acceleration has occured far more rapidly than the term blog. In the first quarter of the year, searches for “viral video” exploded.

It’s hard to compare in a fair way the growth of major blog sites (like WordPress and Blogger) to the growth of online video sites (like YouTube). But I’m guessing the unprecedented growth of YouTube alone further substantiates this hypothesis

I’m going to see if we can get a point of view from Steve Rubel (the Blog expert called by BusinessWeek the “all knowing thumper in a forrest of Bambis”). Stay tuned.

Chart 1: Pet-Rock Like Growth:
Searches on the term “Viral Video” since 2004 (Google Trends)

Chart 2: Slow Boil:
Searches on the term “blogs” since 2004 (Google Trends)