The Death of Blogs

CToday ^ | 09/25/07 | Ted Olsen

[XR7]

...Andy Warhol's famous aphorism was modified to read, "In the future, everyone will be famous to 15 people." Now it looks like Warhol was right after all: Thanks to widespread blog burnout, everyone will be famous to 15 people for 15 minutes.

Tech researcher Gartner Inc. reported...200 million people have given up blogging, more than twice as many as are active.

"A lot of people have been in and out of this thing," Gartner...told reporters. "Everyone thinks they have something to say, until they're put on stage and asked to say it." ...Gartner says blogging has probably peaked.

Which isn't to say that blogging is dead...Blog aggregator Technorati estimates that 3 million new blogs are launched every month...

...What tired bloggers are increasingly discovering...is that it's not necessarily the quality of their blog posts that matter. It's matching their quality with frequency...

[C]onservative political blogger Glenn Reynolds told Wired News..."I know that if I go more than about five or six hours without posting...[I'll get worried messages asking,] 'You haven't posted anything in five or six hours. Are you okay?'"

"Good bloggers work like dogs," says Michael Parsons, editor of the tech site CNet.co.uk. "You can't expect readers to show up unless you show up. And the Internet never closes. … Every successful blogger I've come across is the same. Eat, sleep, and drink the work. No time out; no holidays."

That's not a recipe for healthy living, especially if you're working a day job that's not paying you to blog...

But some of us can't help ourselves. Nearly as common as the abandoned blog is the "final comments before I reclaim my life" post. Followed by "an update to something I said in my final comments." And, "Well, I couldn't let this story go by." And on it goes...

[longtermmemmory]

seems like the chinese anti-internet police at work again.

The MSM too is trying to scare people.

Ironically they said the same thing about tv.

I bet the MSM wants us to “just watch tv”

[expatguy]

"...that it's not necessarily the quality of their blog posts that matter. It's matching their quality with frequency..."

It is actually coming to the point perhaps where many bloggers have sacrificed quality for quantity.

I don't fall for the pressure myself - but the lack of donations and the decline in traffic can be a major bummer - there is a strong lure there just to "update" something for the sake of updating.

Look carefully at the blogs and you will see that the successful ones actually 'write' little if anything. They merely provide links to other stories. The blogs that actually produce news get screwed in the end.

The lack of comments combined with lack of advertiser income or donations is disturbing because it gives an indication that no one really gives a crap what you write - and eventually the blogger just gives up.

While I still blog myself - I often think that for me it is more of a liability than a benefit.

An American Expat in Southeast Asia

[knews_hound]

My blog is a labor of love.

I have no ads, no spyware, no links to other blogs or many of the other accessories I usually find on blogs.

I try to add completely original content, devoid of distractions and annoyances.

So far it works for me since I desire little more than the satisfaction of being able to express myself.

That being said, I have achieved a certain amount of notoriety and have published legitimate articles that were picked up by major sites.  Heck, Rush read one of my pieces on the air. ( It was quite the surprise I can assure you when you are listening to the mornings program and suddenly hear El Rushbo read the piece you wrote less than 12 hours earlier).

Contrary to the title, blogs are alive and well and are sounding the death knell to the MSM and they know it.




Excellent


Cheers,

knewshound

http://www.knewshound.blogspot.com/

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