Just how popular is WordPress? A recent list of the top 100 blogs from Technorati revealed that 48 of the top 100 blogs in the world are built on WordPress. Well-known WordPress developer and SEO expert Joost de Valk of Yoast.com (he creates some fantastic WordPress plugins!) worked with the team at Design by Soap to create an infographic that presents all the WordPress stats visually. Now, you don't have to wonder how popular WordPress is. You can see it all in one place.Here are some highlights from the data in the WordPress a Global Phenomenon infographic:

• WordPress is on 72.4 million websites around the world.
• WordPress is the most popular content management system (CMS).
• 50% of the 73.4 million sites using WordPress are hosted on WordPress.com, and 50% are self-hosted using the open source version of WordPress at WordPress.org.
• By the end of 2011, 20-25% of new websites published were built using WordPress.
• In 2011, WordPress was used on 14.7% of the top 1 million websites in the world.
• In 2011, WordPress was used on nearly 48% of the top 100 blogs in the world.
• WordPress is the leader in the CMS market with 53.8% market share. Joomla has a 9.2% market share, and Drupal has a 6.7% market share. The remaining 30.3% is split between a variety of other platforms, including internal and proprietary content management systems.

WordPress is used by independent bloggers, small businesses, media organizations, corporations, government agencies, universities and academic institutions, and many more. From Forbes to Harvard Law School and NASA to the NFL, WordPress has become the go-to content management system that is flexible enough to meet the needs of the blogger hobbyist to the largest companies and media websites in the world.You can view the infographic below (click to view it at full-size).

What do you think? Can another CMS ultimately compete with WordPress? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.