Disappearing Blogs

Having kicked over the discussional anthill with my post the other day about health care (I'm still busy reading comments and links sent in by readers who have very definite ideas on the subject), I thought I'd back off for a day and discuss - what else? - blogs. More accurately, disappearing blogs.

Yesterday evening my coworker John forwarded me a link to this short article from Slashdot.org ("News For Nerds"): Most Blogs Now Abandoned. A link in that article led me to the original article from the New York Times, Blogs Falling in an Empty Forest, which contained this quote: "According to a 2008 survey by Technorati, which runs a search engine for blogs, only 7.4 million out of the 133 million blogs the company tracks had been updated in the past 120 days."

Why do blogs die?

In some cases, it's because the original thrill goes away as bloggers discover that everyone in the world isn't interested in what they have to say. It can be tough writing something new each day, knowing that only a tiny handful of people are reading it, and fewer of those are interested enough to comment. In my own case, it took more than a year for my blog to get more than a few hits per week and to start generating comments ... today, I average between 30-50 hits per day, with spikes when the occasional post is picked up by DC Blogs or linked to another blog or news article.

Sometimes, the blogger gets started with the idea that there's money to be made in blogging. There may be, but there probably aren't more than a few of those 133 million blogs Technorati tracks that will ever make enough money to make them worth the time and effort required to keep them up.

In other cases, the blogger just runs out of topics or interest. This is a problem I don't have, being interested in just about everything and full of opinions on all of it. There are very few days I sit down at the keyboard and wonder what on earth to blog about, and I like to think that the end result is interesting to my readers.

Perhaps it's not a lack of topics or interest, but a desire only to post when one has something worthwhile to say, rather than just churn out words to fill blank space. I think Gilahi, one of my favorite bloggers, falls into this category.

Limited time is another factor. Blogging represents an investment of time that many people don't have too much of. It takes me about 30 minutes to an hour to do an average post, and I can only manage the time by doing it very early in the morning, before all the other demands on my time ramp up. I'm always amazed that Amanda posts so regularly, despite the incredible demands of an active toddler and her frequent travels around Asia. Then there are folks like Mike, who never tire of reminding us that they're retired and have all the time in the world. $%#&!.

Finally, some bloggers may find that they don't want to give up their online anonymity, or are upset by some of the comments their posts received. I've had occasional disagreements with some readers of my blog (right, lacochran and SuzyQ?), but never a serious flame war. The closest I came was a comment I received a few years ago that started with "You're an idiot" and went downhill from there.

Blogs disappear or are updated only occasionally for any number of reasons. Those that remain are powered by the interest of their owners and the support of their readers. I enjoy blogging as a creative outlet and an opportunity to vent on all the things that interest me (or piss me off, which is just as often the case).

But speaking of time for blogging, that time is now over. It's time to go to work. Darn. But at least I get paid for doing that.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo