Why are we here? And the lifecycle of blogs

So, what’s the blog all about? Aside from facing the inimitable existentialist questions about oneself, I have seen a slew of posts on the “why” of blogs and what is it all for? A few observations come to the fore. As cited in Opinionated Marketers, it really depends on your own objectives (fair enough) to establish what is a successful blog. Blogs continue to crop up at an incredible rate, although there appear to be signs that the rate of growth has matured as people have been moving their energies into the social networking world; and the life cycle of a blog is decidedly short (evidently many don’t last past 4 months).

David Sifry’s (founder of Techorati) State of the Blogosphere report in April 2007 says that “Technorati is now tracking over 70 million weblogs, and we’re seeing about 120,000 new weblogs being created worldwide each day. That’s about 1.4 blogs created every second of every day.” And, in the Live Web report, I was fascinated to see that there are more blogs in Japanese (37% of all blogs) than in English (36% of all blogs); only 8% of blogs are in Chinese. In 10th position, funnily enough is Farsi.

In a true sign of self-consciousness, meanwhile, bloggers are questioning why they are spending so many hours on their site, writing about themselves or otherwise exposing themselves. I am conscious, if also conscientious, about the ‘challenge’ posed by blogging. In a sign of the questioning, per a technorati study (that I haven’t been able to track down), apparently 79% of all blogs are abandoned — points to the pointlessness that many discover. Notmike reports from Gartner that there are now over 200 million dead blogs (see NY Post report). I have myself a second blog that I voluntarily began as a one-time experiment. Otherwise, my attention is uniquely consecrated to this site. This Caslon site (from down under) is interesting for accumulating stats on blogs. A Perseus report (see NYT article) says that 66% of blogs haven’t been updated in the last two months — which they claim is tantamount to dead.

In a Pew study, dating mid-2006, they surveyed 7,012 US adults by phone, including 4,753 internet users of whom 8% are bloggers, said that Bloggers write about the following topics (not including the splog, or spam blogs which apparently account for just under 10% of all blogs): Source no longer available on line.

• “My life and experiences:” 37%
• Politics and government: 11%
• Entertainment: 7%
• Sports: 6%
• General news and current events: 5%
• Business: 5%
• Technology: 4%
• Religion, spirituality or faith: 2%
• Hobbies: 1%
• Health: 1%

When I look at that list, I get a little scared, as I continue to post on all of the above but religion, spirituality and faith… (per my cloud I also specialize on France!). Sounds like a little lack of blog focus (which is one way not to get a quick, easy audience).

On another level, there is a whole lot of posting on how to make money on one’s blog, including my blogging friend at St Bloggie and at eMoms. And even making money on abandoned blogs, per this post at Bloggingexperiment [closed]. The motivations for blogging are varied, but apparently if a blog is to last, the posts tend to need to have content/length and the author must truly enjoying writing…. Personally, I am counting 10 months and going strong… Haven’t made a cent yet; it’s not part of the master plan. But I have enjoyed making the random virtual contacts (‘tlogs) and I plan to continue, at least for now.