The death of blogging...

...is grossly exaggerated despite the late summer malaise that has many bloggers wondering why they are still doing it. Being part of TheGoodBlogs puts us in a good position to ponder on such things. Indeed, our entire future depends on its longevity, blogging that is. Examination of blogrolls in conjunction with archives is an interesting exercise. You'll find so many blogrolls contain bloggers that have stopped blogging. Not those Sunday bloggers who created an account on a whim, but ones who have blogged for 2-3 years. They suddenly stop either entirely or they create new blogs as a testament to some significant change in their lives or simply just because... But for every blogger that stops, at least one or more steps up to take their place. Why? because the modern day blog is your personal soapbox, the only difference being your Central Park pretty much includes the entire universe. It is part of the human spirit to express, share, encourage, chide and vent, hopefully in public and hopefully near at least one listening ear. Blogging is as much for the blogger as it is for the reader.

On a related note, I still wonder at where RSS and syndication will go in future. I think its importance will be more apparent for the aggregators or people like us who build blog networks. What about your average blog reader, will they become feed junkies? Here's the part that makes very little sense to me at least. Apart from a very small population who have sufficient time to gather many feeds and read them everyday, does it really make sense for the rest of us, who lead busy lives and struggle to find time to comb through a dozen feeds in the hope they find something interesting. And then, what is the magic number, a dozen, 20? I would suggest that we subscribe to feeds as a paranoid mechanism in the hopes we won't miss out on a blog that once caught our eye. Yet once subscribed it is interesting how many of the feeds are followed religeously on a daily basis. I have 20 feeds on my Outlook and another 20 on my PocketPC, both are updated daily and both have not been read for quite some time. Not that the feeds were uninteresting, but simply I lack the time and discipline to devote an hour of my life every day to read a whole bunch of feeds. On the other, working with TheGoodBlogs and our beta testers, I invariably find something that is current, new and interesting. Hopefully, over time, others will attest to my experience. Perhaps, there is something in stumbling over a new blog or even just one entry that touches us. Ergo, the accidental blog...

For all those who think it is easy street to create a Web 2.0 company and flip it for a many dollars 6 months later, think again. It is incredibly hard work because the resources are short, the hours are long and the risks are high. Because we build the bridge as we walk on it, the need for speed and agility is both intoxicating and suffocating. But I remember the tabasco ad, and liken our endeavour to be the same, when we savour the moment, it burns like hell and we wonder why we're doing it, yet, it creates an addiction making us come back for more, again and again