You should qualify your interest in the link by pointing out to your visitors that it is basically a self-selected group (only those who submit to blogsearch) and therefore not representative, and therefore the survey is unscientific. In particular, their results make bloggers seem more active than common sense allows. Those people who submit their blogs to a blog search engine can be expected to be among the most active bloggers, and thus surveying only them leads to some highly skewed results. But if you wander around Live Journal or Blogger for awhile, you come to realize that the vast majority of blogs rarely get updated. I recently sat with a young friend who was looking at the LiveJournal entries of her high school friends (she graduated last May) and she was sad to see that most of them hadn’t been updated in a month or two.
I myself have periods when I go a month without posting and then other periods where I post several times a day. I’d probably only take such a survey if I was in the middle of one of my active phases, and if I gave an answer based on a 2 or 3 week time frame, it would give a skewed sense of what my annual average is. My blog is 2 years old and has 300 entries. That’s an average of one post every 2.4 days. The average, however, doesn’t say much about the actual experience of trying to work some essay/blog writing into a busy schedule. The longest I’ve gone without posting is 8 weeks, and the most I’ve ever posted in one day is 16 entries.
A lot of my favorite blogs demostrate similar variability. Virginia Postrel, last year when she was finishing her book, would go 4 weeks at a time without post. Christina Wodtke, when she was finishing her book, also went several weeks without a major post. Tom Tomorrow is currently on vacation and has shut down his blog. Moxie has wearied of posting and now often posts repeats from her archive.
In other words, from what I’ve seen, periods of excitement and interest, a writers attachment to their blog, are interspersed with periods of lethargy, weariness, boredom and disinterest.
I don’t think anyone can keep a blog going steadily for several years. Life intercedes. I do notice a number of interesting strategies for dealing with the periods of lethargy, some of which I’ve already mentioned. Moxie posts repeats from her archives. Virginia Postrel, working on her book, would give just one day a month to her blog, but would then go online and post 15 interesting things. Someone remarked that her site was a monthly magazine, not a blog.
However, the most common tactic that I’ve seen, to keep sites going, is to make them multi-person. Harry Hatchet had a great weblog, and represented the pro-war British Left perspective online, but after major fighting ended in the spring, his interests wandered back to the rest of his life, and to keep his blog going, he invited in other people. Tom Tomorrow did the same. Gaggle of Gals was an attempt to do the same.
The rule then, among blogs, is periods of interest followed by periods of disinterest, and a poll like the one you link to is probably going to be answered by people during one of their periods of interest, and therefore it will overstate their long-term level of interest.
There is one exception to the rule that blogs must succumb to a period of disinterest, and that is when the blogger is basically being paid to blog, it is their job, or it is closely related to their jobs. Thus Joi Ito and Glenn Renyolds blogs can be expected to demonstrate greater longevity that a merely personal blog.
Interesting findings from a blogging survey done by The Blog Search Engine. Here’s the first question: 1. How often do you blog or update your blog? Once a Day 28.9% More than once in a day 23.9% 2-4 Times a
I tried to post on Sunday, but your site was intermitent and then went out completely and I couldn’t reach it for hours. Got 404 errors.
You should qualify your interest in the link by pointing out to your visitors that it is basically a self-selected group (only those who submit to blogsearch) and therefore not representative, and therefore the survey is unscientific. In particular, their results make bloggers seem more active than common sense allows. Those people who submit their blogs to a blog search engine can be expected to be among the most active bloggers, and thus surveying only them leads to some highly skewed results. But if you wander around Live Journal or Blogger for awhile, you come to realize that the vast majority of blogs rarely get updated. I recently sat with a young friend who was looking at the LiveJournal entries of her high school friends (she graduated last May) and she was sad to see that most of them hadn’t been updated in a month or two.
I myself have periods when I go a month without posting and then other periods where I post several times a day. I’d probably only take such a survey if I was in the middle of one of my active phases, and if I gave an answer based on a 2 or 3 week time frame, it would give a skewed sense of what my annual average is. My blog is 2 years old and has 300 entries. That’s an average of one post every 2.4 days. The average, however, doesn’t say much about the actual experience of trying to work some essay/blog writing into a busy schedule. The longest I’ve gone without posting is 8 weeks, and the most I’ve ever posted in one day is 16 entries.
A lot of my favorite blogs demostrate similar variability. Virginia Postrel, last year when she was finishing her book, would go 4 weeks at a time without post. Christina Wodtke, when she was finishing her book, also went several weeks without a major post. Tom Tomorrow is currently on vacation and has shut down his blog. Moxie has wearied of posting and now often posts repeats from her archive.
In other words, from what I’ve seen, periods of excitement and interest, a writers attachment to their blog, are interspersed with periods of lethargy, weariness, boredom and disinterest.
I don’t think anyone can keep a blog going steadily for several years. Life intercedes. I do notice a number of interesting strategies for dealing with the periods of lethargy, some of which I’ve already mentioned. Moxie posts repeats from her archives. Virginia Postrel, working on her book, would give just one day a month to her blog, but would then go online and post 15 interesting things. Someone remarked that her site was a monthly magazine, not a blog.
However, the most common tactic that I’ve seen, to keep sites going, is to make them multi-person. Harry Hatchet had a great weblog, and represented the pro-war British Left perspective online, but after major fighting ended in the spring, his interests wandered back to the rest of his life, and to keep his blog going, he invited in other people. Tom Tomorrow did the same. Gaggle of Gals was an attempt to do the same.
The rule then, among blogs, is periods of interest followed by periods of disinterest, and a poll like the one you link to is probably going to be answered by people during one of their periods of interest, and therefore it will overstate their long-term level of interest.
There is one exception to the rule that blogs must succumb to a period of disinterest, and that is when the blogger is basically being paid to blog, it is their job, or it is closely related to their jobs. Thus Joi Ito and Glenn Renyolds blogs can be expected to demonstrate greater longevity that a merely personal blog.
The server was down all day due to hardware failures. Sorry about that.
People Blog for Money?
Interesting findings from a blogging survey done by The Blog Search Engine. Here’s the first question: 1. How often do you blog or update your blog? Once a Day 28.9% More than once in a day 23.9% 2-4 Times a