When Blogs Die

I haven't posted here for a while - probably the longest time since the inception of the blog. I don't know how that has affected regular readership. Although A.B. is not a personal blog, this article about slow and moribund blogs or those whose contents change abruptly resulting in the loss of readership, caught my eye.

Back in 2004, the blogger known as “Mister Bachelor” was swinging at the top of his middle-aged game — collecting women and readers (nearly 8,000) — with salacious tales of his Lothario lifestyle.

He was revered and reviled and loving every minute of it.

Then he fell in love, and with that it was all downhill — for the blog, that is.

Earlier this year, the once frolicking Mister Bachelor of heavy Web traffic and outraged comments was laid to rest. In its place, The Blog and Chain was born, snarky and sardonic but devoid of sex and drama. At last count, it had fewer than 150 readers, according to the reformed Mister Bachelor, who now goes by the alias Daedalus.

Personal blogs are like child stars. Some soar too quickly and die too young. Others drop out, lay low for a while and come back stronger than ever. More often, they return reinvented, uninspired and lackluster, missing that special something that used to leave audiences wanting more.

Blogs are born, blogs die — it’s a cycle as old as blogging itself, said Scott Rosenberg, author of Say Everything: How Blogging Began, What It’s Becoming and Why It Matters.

“Things grow and mature, and then they reach their end,” he said. “That’s the shape of our lives.”

Blogs end up in the virtual graveyard for as many reasons as they came into being in the first place. Sometimes, the bloggers get out of their system whatever they wanted to say. Or they reach the fame they were after. Other times, they just give up.

“In some cases people stop because they achieve their goal,” Rosenberg said. “Others stop because they’ll never achieve their goal.”

.....

Jessica Cutler has birthed and buried four blogs and is authoring a fifth. But she’s never matched the fame of her 2003 effort, Washingtonienne, which lasted just 13 days but scandalized the nation’s capital by chronicling her liaisons with Washington power brokers. The notoriety led to what she termed a “mini-career” of writing about herself. She penned pieces for high-profile media outlets, usually about sex or scandal, posed for Playboy and wrote a book, Washingtonienne, that is being made into an HBO series.

Now happily married and pregnant, Cutler seems ambivalent toward her blog-earned fame. When the URL on JessicaCutlerOnline expired, she just let it die. Her latest blog is a hodgepodge of domestic fare and profane but witty observation. Blogs, Cutler has concluded, are “like trees falling in a forest.

“If no one read them, it’s like they never really existed.”

Comments

[Joe]

We've all noticed the dying blogs phenomenon before, and it's always fun to speculate as to why it happens, but another thing I've noticed lately that I think is interesting -- they tend to come back, at least in part (i.e. posting again but less frequently). Not always. But Michael Berube announced the death of his blog and it's back. Jessica Wilson and Benj Hellie announced the death of their blog, and now it's back. Fafblog died and is now at least in a coma.

[Ruchira]

Joe:

Where will you put A.B. now compared to the frenetic blogging that was the norm in the early days? Come up with a suitable medical term.

[Joe]

Middle aged? :) Not sure that's a medical term, but doesn't it seem to fit the change in the blog's energy/activity level?

[kochuthresiamma p j]

i was reading a blog by The Layman in which he talks of the blogger maturing. the first sign of this maturity is the decreasing frequency of posts. that happens only when the blogger achieves a certain confort level in the blogsphere and doesnt feel the need to make his presence felt.

[Ruchira]

In that case KPJ, we at A.B. must have become "really" comfortable.