On being a sprig.

    At last count the Technorati.com website was tracking more then 112 million blogs. Again, one hundred and twelve million blogs, written by a hundred million people all around the world from every culture and all walks of life. Some people maintain multiple blogs; other blogs are maintained by several people. And more blogs are added to the World Wide Web each day, although some are abandoned as well. 

    Gartner analysts have stated that the number of active blogs reached its peak in 2007. They expect the number of new blogs to equal the number of abandoned blogs. And all those abandoned blogs will just add to the websam (web flotsam). If a blog falls over in the blogosphere forest while a hundred million other bloggers are screaming for attention, does anybody notice? Does anybody care?

    There are many types of blogs, with pictures, videos, pod casts and writings in every style imaginable. Some blogs are the original web log diaries, where people describe their own daily lives; others are political, artful, environmental, sentimental, mental, anything goes. Some of these bloggers are serious journalists reporting serious issues. Others are pretend journalists that can not possibly be taken seriously.

    The quality of all those blogs is just as diverse as the subjects. Some blogs are the equivalent of an evening at the Joneses, being forced to watch a slideshow of their vacation snapshots (shiver) while wondering what time it will be socially acceptable to leave. Some blogs are informative, others are educational or entertaining. There are even a select few jewels that are all those at the same time. Some bloggers don’t even take the time to run their drivel through a spellchecker (you know who you are!), while others post works of remarkable compositions, elegant style and wonderful prose (no, I didn’t mean you!) (no, I didn’t mean myself either).

    Many blogs have advertising on their sites. And indeed many bloggers are desperately trying to increase traffic to their site, so they may glean some income from those adverts. Although in reality few even make enough to offset their costs. To this purpose the only real winners are those sites catering to the bloggers by offering advertising services, or schemes to increase traffic, such as the projectwonderful.com website. Some sites are nothing more then a thinly veiled form of click fraud. Many link exchange sites are little more then an I-click-on-yours-if-you-click-on-mine scheme. Sure, it increases traffic, but it remains to be seen if it increases actual readers.

    So, why are we doing this? Why am I doing this? Honestly, I am not all that sure. But I will admit I get a kick out of people who are actually reading my posts. Some don’t like it, some do. But just one visitor reading my work and appreciating it, makes me feel like I accomplished something, however small it may be.

    Maybe that’s all blogging is about. Rambling about whatever you feel like rambling about and perhaps some day, you actually hit on something that somebody finds valuable. And maybe that’s enough, just being a little sprig in this giant blogosphere forest.