Archive for September 2007
The blogosphere is a pretty large sphere. Millions of new blogs are created on a daily basis, making it larger still as I speak. But here is the kicker: How many of them actually last?
26-year-old computer geek Adam finds that many blogs die almost as quickly as they are created, so the actual growth rate of the blogosphere is much slower than it is hyped to be. When I interviewed Adam, I withheld my identity from him, by wearing tons of makeup, just to see how things would go.
Sauhard: Hello there, Adam. Thanks for allowing me to interview you.
Adam: WOAH! SO MUCH MAKE-UP! IT’S BRITNEY!
Sauhard: You’d be surprised. There are a lot of people out there who look like Britney. Anyway, you wanted to talk about your interesting discoveries about the blogosphere?
Adam: Oh, yes. I think the statistics out there about the blogosphere are so misleading. Seriously, the blogosphere just isn’t growing as fast as some people would like you to believe.
Sauhard: Why do you say that?
Adam: Well, you see, it’s all too common an occurrence to have some enthusiastic person (with no social life) to sign up on WordPress or LiveJournal or whatever and writes a couple of prolific (but ultimately meaningless) entries. Then they wake up the next day and consider writing another entry, but go like meh and skip it. Then they skip the next day. And the next day. And the next day. Soon, they forget that they even have a blog.
Sauhard: What happens then? Does the blog die?
Adam: Some might say that, yes. But, blogs are not people. All that happens is some database containing all the entries somewhere gets a little rusty. But it can be revived. After all, it’s just an SQL database at the other end, and the server gets a little bored because it no longer has to serve any pages. But it doesn’t truly die.
Sauhard: Interesting, Adam. Can you give me some examples of blogs that have gone through this phenomenon?
Adam: Ah yes. There was this thing I used to read last month, called sauhard.com. It was really good, but I was a little disappointed that it seems to have been aband–
Sauhard: Oh shoot, OH SHOOT. LOOK AT THE TIME! I’m sorry Adam, but I must really go. I’m getting late for my next appointment.