Tuesday, June 9, 2009

The Thrill is Gone

Interesting and somewhat bittersweet article in Sunday's New York Times about blogging. Among the statistics cited:

"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. That translates to 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."

And:

"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.”

Me? I'm a crass commercialist who has no qualms saying I began this thing merely as a place to plug the books whose editors were kind enough to include me. I never imagined it would bring any notoriety to me personally.

I'm a pretty private person anyway, who has no interest in sharing the details of my personal life. I do not twit (is that the appropriate term?) nor do I Facebook.

If I abandoned this thing tomorrow, the links on the right to where you can buy the books will still work.

And anyway, dreams and ambition are for suckers . . .

6 comments:

Cate Gardner said...

I hate to think of my poor blog floating along in a lonely websphere.

Brendan P. Myers said...

Personally, I can only guarantee you this: your blog will always have at least one lurker.

Whatever the subject, it is always entertaining.

Unknown said...

i'm okay thinking of my blog being alone in the vast universe. i just get weirded out thinking that it might outlast me.... *shivers

Brendan P. Myers said...

Funny, I spent hours and hours reading the late Thomas Disch's blog (one of my favorite writers) after hearing about his untimely death. One of his posts even inspired a story -- "Rated "M" -- clickable on the right side of the screen. It's still available here:

http://tomsdisch.livejournal.com/

Only wish I knew about it and participated while he was still around. His last post was only days before he ended his own life.

Aaron Polson said...

Truthfully, it was a good six months of blogging before I received regular comments. People want quick fix, but everything worthwhile takes time.

As for the blog outliving me...weird, but I could leave a worse legacy.

Brendan P. Myers said...

Amen, Aaron.