Like anything, blogging was cool, and now it's loosing speed. I notice my reader level has gone way down, and my comments are now few and far between on my site. But I like to yap, so I will continue to do so. I'll just tell myself someone is reading.

I read you, Mandy. I think it is a passing thing but something will remain or morph. I am not particularly annoyed as I like to natter. I am happy with the stats but am convinced they are cooked, ridden with bots and referral page spammers.

Happy New Year Alan, Morton off to a good start in 2005 I see.

I think there's been a number of blogs that I used to regularly read that have gone and many that were frequent which now blog irregularly. I think there's still enough out there to keep things interesting for a while yet. It's the decline rather than fall.

It could also just be a churn with new ones replacing the old - but I think the better or at least most compulsive writers are already in. A certain level of mania needs to part of the personality of a blogger and I can trace in my life a series of sub-obsession information-based level hobbies or habits that this is part of the sequence. The main one which has been radio listening but also, letter writing map collecting and used books. If I think about it what I have really replaced in terms of time are hours rotting in front us useless TV.<p>And thank you for pointing out the Morton. Yes, we crushed Dumbarton to put ourselves #3 in the table but that promotion spot may be too far away. You are at Inverness today I see.

I think the drop-off in commentry has something to do with the holidays (and also a lot of political bloggers dropping out after the U.S. elections), but there are an awful lot of blogs out there which are cookie-cutter and aren't really about anything. How many wannabe Instapundits and Daily Koses does the Internet require?

My blog is going to get pretty boring (if it wasn't already) over the winter because it's always been basically about two small portions of my life - NY politics, and running around on field trips. No field trips in winter.

As for blogging being "cool," being a deeply uncool person, I have been more or less creating web pages for ten years, of all types. (In the words of the Bishop of Bath and Wells, "I'll DO anything TO anything") Some have been popular and have gotten small amounts of media ink (very small), most of them extremely obscure (and some of them with a life span no longer than that of a mayfly). I honestly couldn't tell you how many web ventures I have had over the years, from everything from music to social activism and now, politics - it's completely a creative exercise, like painting a picture. As with any creative endeavor, I tend to regard these web projects as being finite - they serve some sort of modest real-life purpose (hopefully) and then come to a natural end. In some exceptional circumstances, they have pushed me outside of my comfort zone into offline action, and I suspect they'll continue to do so.

It was inevitable that I would one day have a blog. I enjoy writing sentences with verbs in them, something I don't get to do in real life (well, not without also having to stick to a deadline). Something I don't think many bloggers "get" is that for people for whom writing is like breathing, it really doesn't matter half the time if anyone is reading or not. I would hate it if no one ever left comments, but that's not why I do it. It's just one more avenue for creativity and trying to make sense of life. I certainly don't regard it as "publishing" or being a "journalist." There are many bloggers out there who see the Internet as a way of influencing or even taking over offline institutions - many of them seem very disappointed that the revolution has not come. There may be windows of opportunity, but there won't be a revolution. Not as long as the coin of the Internet/blogosphere realm is the free association of ideas that can jump across traditional barriers of distance and even social standing, while the offline world remains all about traditional social networks - who you know, or appear to know, being more important than who you are. Two very different worlds (I'm cool with both, but switching back and forth between the two can be a bitch). For some reason, a lot of political bloggers thought all that was going to change!

Thank you Alan

Very interesting NYCO and much mirroring of my own thoughts. For years I have kept diaries, written ten letters a week to pals, written long paper after long paper and so this recreational form fills that nitch. On days like the ice stormy one out there now, it is a real nice one to have as well.

Rob Paterson sees a similar slump and hopes that it is a turn in the road towards more action rather than a stop sign, as he puts it people may be moving "from the talk to the walk". I don't know - that would be nice but it is only realistic for some. I think not that many people are interesting writers and not that many people are interested in writing. It is up to you the reader to judge the first but it <i>is</i> up to the writer to determine the second. If you need readership you better be interesting and if you need a motive you better be interested. Otherwise why do it? I am sub-manic and have been an info nerd my whole life. I suspect I will continue on this medium for a while.

Despite my prolonged lapse over the holidays I write for the sake of writing most of the time and I've noticed my posts have shifted from "hey, look at this neat thing I found on the internet" to "this is what I've been up to or this is what's been going through my head- what do you think." I'm not sure there's a qualitative difference between the two though I suspect people that don't actually know me in some form won't have much of an interest in the more personal posts.

Comments are nice but if I measuered the success of my site by the number of comments to a given post it would be a complete and utter failure. In fact, this little thread you have going here is probably longer than all but 3 or 4 threads on my own site and the only two I know for sure that are longer are 100% drivel and nonsense.

But I like drivel and nonsense or at least fooling around. Too many threads are humourless stake-making. Your two sides of blogging are a very neat and tidy description, Ben.

re: bots - If you can, try awstats (http://awstats.sf.net). It does a very nice job of filtering bot traffic from stats.

re: blogs closing - hmmm, the effect is more seasonal and tidal I think. I don't know what they'll look like or what we'll call them ten years from now, but I think easy to publish short chronological postings are a form that's here to stay. I do expect that this form will just be part of a larger whole which includes faceted metatagging, larger aggregator publishers, etc.

"I like writing sentences with verbs in them." That's a bloody spectacular statement. Classic.

I, for one, have seen my stats improve over the holidays - even though I wasn't writing. Maybe because? Hmm.

I suspect that blogging is another trend like pogs or pointy-toed shoes, and like any hobby - reading blogs and writing your own is definitely time consuming enough to be considered a hobby - lots of people don't realize the amount of committment required to become truely fluent in bloginess. Reading is much easier, but then they start writing and discover how time-consuming it is, and lose interest after awhile. The originators - and those few who are drawn into it as the second/third generations but do discover a genuine interest (or the mania) in writing a blog - are eventually left alone by the hipsters, as it was in the beginning.

We're seeing the first wave receding, but don't worry, there will be others...

And yes, awstats rocks.

I'm one of the bloggers who threw in the towel this week. I had two reasons (maybe two and a half) for doing so. The first is that I really was *too* interested. I have a tendency towards obsessive behaviour and since I have other commitments in my life that are more important to me than blogging, I decided to cut down (which was hard) and finally quit which was less hard given that I had already cut down. The second reason is that my blog was I confess a little dull. I really thought I should be writing a different blog, but there was no way I could do that since it would probably take even more time than the one I was writing. The last 'half' reason is personal. Anyway, like smoking, vegetarianism and watching TV I enjoyed doing it, but I ultimately had to quit. I'll still post on other blogs (I've got a piece up on the Good Beer Blog right now, for instance) so you probably won't even miss me.

I do wonder where I get the time but I what I really do is get up early - not insanely early - but 45 minutes earlier than the house. I got into the habit when I was doing my LLM through distance education. My trick is to unhide some of those posts throughout the day. I now think of writing somethings as part of waking up like coffee - I am sure it often shows. I have given up a large part of my TV watching but I try to not spend too much time on line, especially now that I am reading the Patrick O'Brian Jack Aubrey series as one. I also write at noon when I should go for an hour's walk each day.

I'm sure my output will drop once I start working although if I end up at a call centre (a very real possibility) I might still end up writing at work during the slow periods.

Another season comes and more bloggers quit.