Google's Blogger is hosting an estimated 8 million blogs, more than any of almost three dozen competing services. In second place is LiveJournal.com, with about 6.6 million accounts, according to research from Perseus Development Corp., a Web-based survey firm. Jeffrey Henning, chief operating officer of Perseus, said that 31.6 million Web logs have been created on hosting services, and he expects that number to grow to 53.4 million by the end of the year. The survey was based on a review of 10,000 blogs. The market leaders are Google's (GOOG: news, chart, profile) Blogger.com (also known as Blogspot), LiveJournal.com and Xanga.com. Henning added that Microsoft (MSFT: news, chart, profile) has had a huge impact since its launch of a hosting service last December. "The primary challenger (high momentum, new player) is MSN Spaces," he said. Henning also said blogging seems to have caught on after Dave Winer organized the Bloggercon 2000 conference. "Backed, as it was by Harvard, [that] was the inflection point for the hosted blogging industry," he added. "It attracted incredible attention from the mainstream media, propelling interest in the category and dramatically accelerating the account growth."