Posted on April 17, 2006 at 9:35 AM in thoughts
Note: The below is an archived entry from Earthling, formerly EarthLink's official blog. The blog itself has been decommissioned and is no longer updated, and comments are trackbacks are no longer accepted.
David Sifry of Technorati puts out a quarterly report sharing his findings about the state of the blogosphere. April's report is fascinating, even if you're not a blog-watcher.
Not only has the number of blogs Technorati is tracking doubled in the last six months (to 35 million blogs and counting), but according to Sifry's statistics, 55% of the blogs out there are still publishing new content 3 months after their birth. Over half of the people creating new blogs stick with them for at least three months. That number is up 5% from three months ago. On the downside, spam and junk blogs are rising rapidly as well.
That's surprising to me. You'd think that as blogs go mainstream, more and more regular folk start blogs because they've been sold the idea of blogging, rather than having a need and seeking out blogging to fill it. But apparently many of the new bloggers are finding something satisfying in the process, as the new blogs that are going online today are sticking around at least longer than they were before.
I've written previously about why there's a benefit to reading blogs. And I've gently suggested that we not spend too much time either elevating or denigrating the medium of blogging, and instead move ahead with it. The numbers would suggest bloggers are doing just that, though it would be interesting to see what percentage of blogging is taken up with discussing the status of blogging itself. Read on for more thoughts.
In his reaction to Sifry's State of the Blogosphere report, Mark Evans wrote the following:
You could argue blogs have become the business cards of the 21st century - if you want to establish credibility, blogs are an easy way to demonstrate your skills and experience.
For some they function as interactive, searchable, conversant business cards. For others, they are gathering points, or records of important and trivial things, or tools, or expressions of identity, or just a place to dump stuff.
I wonder if part of why more new bloggers seem to be sticking with it has to do with more and more people wanting to have some sort of presence online -- direct or oblique, personal or work-related, blog or otherwise. Before I left on Wednesday, I had a conversation with one colleague who expressed the sense that soon if not already, everyone will just be expected to have *something* out there representing who they are, whether it be a blog, a Flickr account, a World of Warcraft character, a MySpace page, a static page, or an entry in a directory somewhere. It's this way already for a huge proportion of the internet-using population, and I wonder if that expectation is moving in wider and wider circles.
I have to say that even though part of my job is to build and maintain this online presence at Earthling which is very much an authentic part of me now, I'm still feeling the need to create another space somewhere that can contain all of the things that make up who I am but don't necessarily fit together. It will probably take the form of a list of pointers out to other things, maybe something like what Merlin Mann has. It's not quite personal, not quite work, just sort of a collection of the "productive me" and all of the things I might want someone to discover about me.
Comments
Long time listener, first time caller.
I take notice when earthling pontificates on blogging, because I have a learning disability in this area.
Recently, I made an extremely sorry attempt at creating a blog entry (mostly to try out some junky blogging software that came with a new GoDaddy account. Mostly).
I stumbled in the same way I've stumbled dozens and dozens of times. The lameness was off the charts, and I was ashamed. I have no skills when it comes to writing about anything in first person.
There are two reasons this is especially weird:
1. I fought proudly in the dotcom wars as a professional writer. I've contributed tens of thousands of widely-read words to the Internet. But the vast majority of them had nothing to do with me.
2. In non-writing life, I will toot my own horn at the drop of a hat. I'll do it in e-mail too, for that matter.
So, my question to Earthling is, what's the secret to the first-person writing game? You've talked about blogging as a medium, but as somebody who is excellent at non-obnoxious, first-person non-fiction, what can you say about your craft? This could be a service to bloggers everywhere.
I'll take my answer off the air.
Posted by Mr. Harris | April 21, 2006 10:35 PM
I just so wanna say that it is so really like incredible on like the way you know everything is posted about the whole Nintendo Wii but like what is this whole saga about? I think no one will care for like this whole downscale system 'cus like this is so like confusing and like I just think its wrong to confuse people about all this scientific stuff, you know? Like, well you know how people comment on new stuff-I dunno I just like so think that the drawings in this stuff will be sooo weird, you know? what do you think? ;-)
Posted by JB | May 14, 2006 9:38 PM