Chaim Amalek emails: “Even the New York Times notes the decline of blogs. Luke was there at the start, and he lingers on at the end.”
Khunrum emails: “You always hear “check us out on twitter or facebook” nothing about blogs.”
Luke says: He who is married to the zeitgeist will soon be alone. My Lukeford.net blog readership hasn’t varied much in numbers over past nine years.
Chaim: “I disagree. If you can ride the wave, you can travel far. Regarding your blog readership, static numbers are ok only if you are at the top of the heap. Otherwise, one asks who is reading? Television producers, or yeshiva bachurs sneaking a peak at the internet?”
Fred emails: “Wow–that sounds deep. I googled “he who is married to the zeitgeist” and didn’t pick up any hits. Is that original with you?”
Former bloggers said they were too busy to write lengthy posts and were uninspired by a lack of readers. Others said they had no interest in creating a blog because social networking did a good enough job keeping them in touch with friends and family.
Blogging started its rapid ascension about 10 years ago as services like Blogger and LiveJournal became popular. So many people began blogging — to share dieting stories, rant about politics and celebrate their love of cats — that Merriam-Webster declared “blog” the word of the year in 2004.
Defining a blog is difficult, but most people think it is a Web site on which people publish periodic entries in reverse chronological order and allow readers to leave comments.
Yet for many Internet users, blogging is defined more by a personal and opinionated writing style. A number of news and commentary sites started as blogs before growing into mini-media empires, like The Huffington Post or Silicon Alley Insider, that are virtually indistinguishable from more traditional news sources.
Blogs went largely unchallenged until Facebook reshaped consumer behavior with its all-purpose hub for posting everything social. Twitter, which allows messages of no longer than 140 characters, also contributed to the upheaval.
