Blogging 101

As the writer of this blog, I found this article from this weekend's NYTimes to be interesting. I always wonder how many of the millions of blogs out there are actually read, and according to this article, the answer is: not many. The article explains that, while many people start a blog with the hopes of obtaining a book deal, advertising money, or wide viewing audiences, most people are let down by a lack of readership. Indeed,

According to a 2008 survey by Technorati, which runs a search engine for blogs, only 7.4 million out of the 133 million blogs the company tracks had been updated in the past 120 days. That translates to 95 percent of blogs being essentially abandoned, left to lie fallow on the Web, where they become public remnants of a dream — or at least an ambition — unfulfilled.

There are many reasons these blogs are abandoned, including a lack of anonymity or quite the opposite: a lack of readership. Whatever the reason, it's clear that blogs, though increasingly popular reading sources, are often not all they are expected to be.