Most Blogs Now Abandoned 290
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.""
No dream (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The Mysterious Reoccurrence of Mr. Freckles (Score:3, Interesting)
Spam Blogs never die (Score:5, Interesting)
Journaling (Score:5, Interesting)
So, blogging is still a good activity for people. Even if no one else reads their blogs.
As for the people who thought they could make a career out of it, well, they were just idiots.
Re:And nothing of value was lost (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
I dunno. It might not be interesting now, but someone in 100 or 500 years might be interested.
Suffice to say, at least the 21st century has opened made the whole process redundant so future historians won't to worry about a fire burning down the Great Library of Alexandria again.
Blog Business Model (Score:5, Interesting)
2. Start blogging.
3. ?
There is no four. I quit.
Re:Blogs != Get Rich (Score:3, Interesting)
The responses I got were mostly positive and intelligent and the whole thing surprised me a little bit. The internet provides an interesting abstraction for the intellect.
Sturgeon's Law in action. (Score:4, Interesting)
Who would've thought that?? ... besides Theodore Sturgeon and everybody who heard of his law.
(Reminds me of the classical music program host at UofMichigan's official radio station, decades ago, declaring the death of rock-n-roll because only something like 10% of all rock songs were new compositions that year - some decades into the rock music era. Was sorely tempted to call him up and demand he also declare the death of classical music, since 0% were new compositions. B-) )
Re:Journaling (Score:4, Interesting)
It's the same at work. I keep a log of what I do throughout the day and every week I update a database. Management asked for a weekly status report so I whipped up a php script that formats the weekly output into the form they expect to see. So I just copy and paste it into an e-mail and send it off.
It's been a great help, especially at the end of the year when they want justification to give you a 3% raise. Organize it into projects, summarise them, throw in a few highlights and they're very happy.
I've been told several times that I provide twice as much detail as anyone else in his group (he manages three groups of which, I'm a member of one of them).
Part of the reason though is that I was a consultant for many years. I also spent a couple of years telecommuting. So keeping detailed information on what I did kept them aware that I was a valuable member of the team.
[John]
Re:They're all on Facebook now (Score:5, Interesting)
This is what I came here to say. I used to blog, mostly as a way of keeping in touch with friends and family that we aren't physically near. Some of them reciprocated with their own blogs.
Now, everyone that I used to interact with is on Facebook, so that's where I (and they) post. In addition, many of the blogs I might have followed (e.g. celebrities, causes, technology, entertainment) are now on Facebook as well.
It's not that blogs have gone away, it's that they and their audiences have transitioned to social networking.
When the "next big thing" comes along - like Google Wave - people will be lamenting that social networking has gone away. Change happens, and communications improves. It doesn't go away, it gets better.
Re:The Mysterious Reoccurrence of Mr. Freckles (Score:4, Interesting)
I can tell you, at least, why it appeals to people of a certain political persuasion that will remain nameless: They can make short assertions that can not be challenged, plus it's easy to ignore anyone who disagrees with you. It lets them feel like their in a big tough gang without ever having to go out in public. All this while allowing them to believe that they're on the "cutting edge".
You think I'm kidding? check out the tag "#tcot".
Which reminds me of outgoing Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman (R), who last week stated that the "Key to Republican success lies in the ethernet". Twitter is made for a guy like him.
Heck, my site makes more than that each month (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe he's doing it wrong. My site http://www.geekazon.com/ [geekazon.com] which mostly documents a big home renovation project, consistently brings in about $30/month from Google ads. Pays for my DSL line it does. I started the site mainly to keep distant relatives informed about the remodel. I have only updated it a few times in the past 5 years and have done nothing to promote it, but it's usually the top Google result for "lifting a house".
Re:The Mysterious Reoccurrence of Mr. Freckles (Score:3, Interesting)
When you think about it, the telephone is just about the rudest technological device that exists. As Stephen Fry once said, "it's like someone standing behind you yelling 'speak to me, speak to me' over and over again until you pick up".
Online User-created Content (Score:4, Interesting)
For a long time, the information on the web was put there magically by the techocracy that architected it. For non-tech users, getting their information online has been through ever-easier methods of publishing. Web-logging, aka blogging, was just another step in this phase.
The motivation for providing content varies, but psychologists would say that part of it is in the feeling of belonging with peers you identify with. From forum posts, Wikipedia editing, Amazon reviews, posting youtube vids of kittens in sinks, etc - there's a clic for everyone. These are new-found "friends" that people interact with by simply making something appear online.
There's also a compelling push to do what the longstanding "professional" journalism has done for years. So, there's a group that pushes to create look-alike content that fills a niche, but do it online and for free (except for ads). We get "independent" media outlets, political commentary, diy comedy routines, and websites covering local issues. Quality and regularity varies.
All of these things are good - it pushes the body of human knowledge and interaction into a universal format. The transmission (physical wires) and delivery styles might leave something to be desired, but it's in a fairly searchable format as uncontextual text (that context part is still a challenge, all you search engines out there).
I look forward to the slow spread of not just content, but the focus on a universal context system that gets us a more semantic web. Also, we might also get live connections directly to 1 or more senses in real time, someday. Putting these together and you pretty much get an augmented reality stream, completely customizable, so that you won't have to remember so much as be able to process the extra info fast enough. That'll probably hit an upper limit on our brainpower, but we always seem willing to try (driving while using phone and more). After that, jumping over the senses to just filling artificial neurons with the info, accessible by our natural ones, will be the challenge.
Exciting times, this Information Age, still in its infancy.
Re:Online User-created Content (Score:3, Interesting)
That'll probably hit an upper limit on our brainpower, but we always seem willing to try (driving while using phone and more).
Driving while using a phone seems to redline brain power for most people -- to the point that they can't even process the fact that they are impaired. To the point, in fact, that reading and writing on a tiny device while driving seems like reasonable idea.
So much for that.
Quasi-quote from the TV sitcom Becker, "Reality TV is the petri dish where America grows its idiots". That was a crack on the first season of Survivor, and it has been more than vindicated by the way that reality TV has pushed the body of human knowledge and interaction. Web 2.0 is the global petri dish.
Bottom line -- there is only so much information that is valuable to a given human. We (you and I) have limited bandwidth. Web 2.0 simple adds to the cruft that we mush filter in order to find useful info, unless we just settle for whatever is current on Wikipedia.
I don't have a good answer for your concerns about sources of and access to good information, but neither does Blogging or Twitter.
This misses a few things. (Score:3, Interesting)
First, some blogs simply exist as part of spam and SEO objects. Furthermore, there are many specialized blogs out there that only update rarely because their specialties only require infrequent updates or have to do with topics that have bursts of news and then very little. (See for example http://presidentialdebateblog.blogspot.com/ [blogspot.com] (disclaimer: one of the people who runs that is my twin).
In any event, humans go through many different things on a temporary basis. Would one have made a big deal in 1938 or so when there would have been more cars disposed of than currently functioning as evidence that cars are going out of style? This really doesn't tell us anything useful by itself.
The article doesn't tell the whole story, though (Score:3, Interesting)
You have to take this report with a grain of salt, though. A lot of people set up blogs just to see what the fuss was all about, and probably did nothing with them. Similarly, I just read an article that said that the majority of Twitter accounts only have one post. I wouldn't consider a blog or a Twitter account with less than, say, a dozen postings, to be abandoned, since the authors weren't serious about them in the first place.
Over seven million blogs still active is a healthy number. I'd like to hear a report from Technorati that filtered out the blogs that had less than a dozen postings, and I'm willing to bet that the "5% still active" rises to 35 or 40%.