But seriously, the New York Times ran an article a few days ago about why people give up blogging. It's definitely worth the peek if you're looking for some good reading material.
The story mentions the following as possible reasons that blogs go quiet or die:
- Disappointment over the failure to build a large, loyal audience.
- Increasing difficulty in maintaining anonymity with the rise of social networks.
- Decreasing availability of free time.
- Migration to other forms/media, like Twitter.
- Depletion of ideas.
This topic is of interest to me on two fronts.
First of all, the decline of activity in my own blog has been rehashed over the past year. For me, free time and ideas shortages have been the biggest drains on blogging output. While I still take a peek at the Sitemeter and Google Analytics stats for this blog, I've never had the illusion that I'd build up a huge audience. I don't think this site ever saw more than 100 visits a day, even when the storyline was at its peak level of tension.
Comments always have been welcome. Accumulating a large quantity of them never was a hope, but along the way I accumulated a blogroll and network of friends with whom I could share the parts of my life that I wasn't ready to discuss with others. These days I look upon this blog not so much part of a real-time conversation as an archive of one person's experiences with a series of trying times at the end of the 30s. It's a story far too obscure to be worth a movie, but it's also worth sharing.
And then there's the other front... I've noticed over the past year that activity of most of the blogs on my RSS reader waned. Some have moved on because their blogs outlived their usefulness. Others have disappeared with vague references to anonymity breaches. A few others have gone private, with invitation-only.
A couple of years ago, if I didn't make an effort to read new content on my feeds, after a few days, the backlog would get so large that I would have to "declare bankruptcy" and hit "mark all as read". Now I can go a full week without touching the feed reader, and I can still keep reasonable pace.
I've blogged about the notion of a social graph before. It's the representation of relationships between people, expressed as a mathematical abstraction that's used extensively in computer science. The blogosphere, both via blogrolls and RSS feed subscriptions, give evidence to pieces of the social graph. Some are hubs, with lots of incoming and outbound links. Others are less connected.
Visualized, the set of nodes to which my blog belongs is looking very much like a the seed head of a dandelion. With the passage of time, the seeds drift away from the flower. And so, the nodes fade on this cluster of the graph. For now, I am reluctant to let loose into the free and open blue that is the sky... not while there are still other posts to read and conversations to be had.
So now I'm goin' back again,
I got to get to her somehow.
All the people we used to know
They're an illusion to me now.
Some are mathematicians
Some are carpenter's wives.
Don't know how it all got started,
I don't know what they're doin' with their lives.
But me, I'm still on the road
Headin' for another joint
We always did feel the same,
We just saw it from a different point of view,
Tangled up in blue.
-- Bob Dylan, "Tangled up in Blue", Blood on the Tracks
Cue that harmonica coda.
6 comments:
Interesting, 2am. . .
I think WAY more than I used to, about the day I won't blog anymore. And your list captures a decent chunk of my thoughts on the matter.
There is some disappointment about not having built a bigger 'network', altho for me, it's more like friends I've made who've disappeared. If I were to suddenly start getting 50 comments on every post, it would be pretty overwhelming, and that's not really what I want. But lots of my old 'blog-friends' have gone by the wayside, and I miss those friendships, odd as that may seem, since almost none of them did I ever learn their real names, much less meet face-to-face. . .
For me, it isn't so much diminishing free time (altho that plays into it); but my blogging creates a degree of tension in my RL relationships, and I have to remind myself sometimes that the Real World trumps blog-world. . .
And yes, the drying up of the 'creative well' is a very definite factor. So far, I'm still able to keep the stories coming at sufficiently regular intervals, but my 'backlog' has been getting shorter. . .
Anyway, FWIW. . .
I've moved through many of the thoughts you have. I've accept the fact that I'll never get more than 100 hits for any post that doesn't have an explicit sex act in its title. (Swallowing Cum" still gets my most hits per day, years after I wrote it) And I have definitely been saddened when so many of the blogs I read disappear. I persist because my blog is my journal. Its for me. And unlike prior offline journals that I've started, I'm trying to keep this one going.
But the images you used to portray this phenomenon are way more poetic than I could ever come up with.
Well believe it or not I have HNTs and I still never got more than about 100 hits a day. Granted I work in the Traffic Department for an Adult VOD company so if there is anything I know how to do it's NOT get traffic lol. Never use sex in the title, never put porn words in the text, etc. etc. Funny enough the bind me tie me title got more hits than I would have expected and the name of my blog gets more searches than anything.
I love to read Matisse and Monk and part of the reason is they never seem to have the "farewell dear friends" tone. Or mysteriously stop posting, or go on about how taxing the blog has become to their real life. And I find that to be a relief. I like writing maybe some months more than others but I don't have any real desire to stop entirely.
When I first started blogging, it was simply to capture moments in time since my memory sucks ...
And then I fell prey to the "how many hits am I getting?" side of blogging.
Luckily, that quickly passed and I found amazing amounts of comfort in a loyal followers who posted regular comments.
And then I fell off the face of the Earth. I've been away from blogging long enough to really see how much I've missed it, so I've been making more of an effort to reconnect - and have gone back to my original goal - to capture moments in time for fear of forgetting them! That, and I would desperately like to try to become a better writer along the way ...
Great post!
I didn't start a blog with the idea of having half the world reading it, which is good because there are only a small group of people who do read regularly. But, I have to tell you, I love how smart and sassy their comments are. And how supportive.
Basically, I've created a small community and it means a lot to me; it adds another element to my life.
Ideas I don't worry too much about, I write about my life. Sometimes my life is boring as hell, and other times, even *I* can't believe the shit that happens to me!
I struggle most with privacy issues. There are people in my real life that I wouldn't want to stumble upon my blog.
I hate it when bloggers disappear too. I still haven't recovered from SWF42 (Formerly SWF41) disappearing.
I love my blog, but it isn't the same since Hughman's laptop broke. My #1 fan, writing the witty comments to every post, instigated dialogues between the readers that made my blog bigger and funnier than I can do on my own.
He is missed! I am probably going to do a fundraiser for him (unsolicitedly) soon.
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