Comments on: Blogging to Peak in 2007

By: Below The Beltway » Blog Archive » The Great Blogger Fade-Away Of 2007 ?

Thu, 14 Dec 2006 21:41:51 +0000

[...] James Joyner points out that, given what it takes to maintain a blog on a regular basis, this really isn’t all that surprising: Maintaining a decent blog requires a lot of effort and the return on that investment is small, indeed, for most people. Unless one derives a lot of pleasure from researching and writing, which relatively few people do, then the rewards of blogging come from ego–having people read and respond to one’s work–and financial. With millions of blogs out there competing for readers, though, it is exceedingly hard to build up a significant readership. And few of those blogs, even, will make even minimum wage for the hours invested. [...]

By: John Burgess

John Burgess — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 21:35:35 +0000

Many people have more than one blog already. Even James' OTB is associated with three.

By: The American Mind

The American Mind — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 21:07:12 +0000

Gartner Predicts Weblogs to Level at 100 Million...

Gartner, Inc. predicts 2007 will be the year weblogs reach their peak at 100 million worldwide:
The reason: Most people who would ever dabble with Web journals already have. Those who love it are committed to keeping it up, while others have gotten bor...

By: yetanotherjohn

yetanotherjohn — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 18:45:04 +0000

Of course blogging will level off at some point. If the number of blogs continued to increase at its past rate, we would soon have more blogs than people.

By: James Joyner

James Joyner — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 18:08:32 +0000

Yep. A good piece.

Writing is a craft and one can learn to do it. Teachers can help, I think: By assigning lots of writing and then critiquing he hell out of it. But that's damned hard work and most teachers won't do it. Indeed, while I started with good intentions in that regard, I stopped requiring much writing in my survey courses and saved the writing requirements for the majors.

By: Anderson

Anderson — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 17:57:23 +0000

There is another relevant quote:

This is your enemy: a perfectly empty sheet of paper. Nothing will ever happen here except what you make happen. If you are stupid, what happens will be like a signed confession of that fact. If you are unfunny, a humorless patch of words will grow here. If you lack imagination, your reader will know you immediately and forever as the slug you are. Or let me put it to you this way - and you may want to tattoo this somewhere on your bodies - BLANK PAPER IS GOD'S WAY OF TELLING US THAT IT'S NOT SO EASY TO BE GOD.

By: James Joyner

James Joyner — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 16:53:54 +0000

Anderson: My guess is that most people who start blogs and quickly cease updating them discover precisely how little ésprit they possess.

By: Anderson

Anderson — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 16:39:05 +0000

One justification for blogging is recorded in Nietzsche, avant la lettre of course: "I shall see myself, I shall read myself, I shall go into ecstasies, and I shall say: is it possible that I should have had so much ésprit?" Where "ésprit" of course means "wit," roughly. N. is being nasty about what he calls the "literary female," but when ya recognize yourself, ya recognize yourself.