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Most Blogs Now Abandoned
The Narrative Fallacy writes "Douglas Quenqua reports in the NY Times that according to a 2008 survey only 7.4 million out of the 133 million blogs the company tracks had been updated in the past 120 days meaning that "95 percent of blogs being essentially abandoned, left to lie fallow on the Web, where they become public remnants of a dream — or at least an ambition — unfulfilled." Richard Jalichandra, chief executive of Technorati, said that at any given time there are 7 million to 10 million active blogs on the Internet, but it's probably between 50,000 and 100,000 blogs that are generating most of the page views. "There's a joke within the blogging community that most blogs have an audience of one." Many people who think blogging is a fast path to financial independence also find themselves discouraged. "I did some Craigslist postings to advertise it, and I very quickly got an audience of about 50,000 viewers a month," says Matt Goodman, an advertising executive in Atlanta who had no trouble attracting an audience to his site, Things My Dog Ate, leading to some small advertising deals. "I think I made about $20 from readers clicking on the ads.""
...and that's why I hope that the equally obnoxious twitter and social networking fads will die soon after.
They will. But they will be replaced with something even more inane and annoying.
Technoli
I've had my own site since last millenium, primarily as a way to journal my family's life for myself and people in my extended family. It's been a great communication tool to keep up with everyone, and a huge time saver when it comes to sending individual e-mails to everyone.
It's also been a great historical record of when things happened. I'm embarrassed to say that I've checked my blog more than once to make sure I remembered my daughter's birthday right.
It was also a great way for everyone to stay in touch on 9/11. Two of my family were flying that day, and it was a central place where everyone could post their flight delays and locations.
I tried to keep a blog once, but I honestly had nothing interesting to say. Most the time it was just my idle thoughts, and even _I_ didn't care to read them having just thought them. What few blogs I do read tend to be research or tech blogs. Apparently the millions of monkeys at millions of keyboards do get bored eventually.
"Quote me as saying I was mis-quoted." -Groucho Marx
It was a peculiar form of narcissism that ever led people to think anyone gave a crap about their day-to-day lives in the first place. These are the same people who think I need to be updated every few seconds with a tweet detailing every single piece of inconsequential minutia from their lives.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I think whoever thought the name up was a twit. The name sounds like someone barfing (which is what it usually is).
Don't get me started on twit^W tweet.
....that is, those autogenerated blogs on free sites that just contain a mishmash of keywords - or a bunch of stolen content. Those lie fallow because there's no real blogger behind them.
I used to blog technical stuff once or twice a week... now I twitter the little stuff and save blog entries for something more involved, like using setrlimit on Mac OS X. Hard to boil that down to 140 characters... unless it's "setrlimit apparently not working, but the server's running Linux, so, meh".
The Army reading list
It seems the ideas behind twitter, facebook, and blogs are "my thoughts are so important that I'm almost obligated to allow everyone else to read them." Or in twitter's case, "my stream of consciousness is so important [or insert "funny," "witty," "cool," or whatever] ..."
In my experience, while listening to people is definitely a Good Thing, I don't need to listen or read your every thought. For the most part, it gets fairly predictable after a few blog posts. And, frankly, for the most part, I don't really care. I don't care what someone's dog ate :)
The idea that my thoughts really SHOULD be read by other people seems to be an egotistical way to go about your life. And, incidentally, if most people have that attitude - which I think most do, it seems to be human nature to overinflate one's importance in one's own view - then reading other people's blogs won't be very consistent...
And of course, I'm posting this on slashdot because this comment is important and everyone should read it.... :P
The people who have nothing to say are all on Facebook now. The remaining blogs are typically either from people who are serious writers, or those who simply need a place to post operational info like software updates.
And the, of course, there's Twitter.
According to a recent survey, 0 editions of the NY Times have been updated in the last 120 days, meaning that 100 percent have essentially been abandoned, left to lie fallow in landfills, recycling plants and at the bottom of bird cages.
I don't care why you're posting AC
Well, that's the thing. Not the subject matter, but the quality of the writing itself. A good writer can keep your interest in a story about mowing the lawn, while a bad writer can make a murder boring.
Free Martian Whores!
*Gasps!*
Next you'll tell me that most novels are started and never completed!
I usually blog about technical things that I think might help people out. I don't care if I'm famous, and I leave personal stuff to Facebook where friends and family that might care can read it.
My blog gets about 50-75 hits a day, all from search engines searching for items I write about. Of course they aren't going to come back and read me every day, and that's not why I write it. I do it mainly to give back a little, since I've been helped so often from googling (er, I mean blinging) for info whenever I get into a jam.
And I'm not even going to link to my blog from here just to prove I'm not an attention whore!
They can make short assertions that can not be challenged, plus it's easy to ignore anyone who disagrees with you.
This is true of every political persuasion. The fact that you can't see it just means you are too deep in the other side to notice.
I think one reason many blogs fail is because the blogger didn't set up a posting schedule beforehand. Many blogs that I like to read promise they will put up a new post every Sunday, or every M-W-F or whatever works for them. I like it because I know when to look for new posts and also because it shows commitment on the blogger's part to the blog.
The Travelling Adventurer