MacLeans Magazine takes a look at the hype over blogs and comes to a few conclusions.

The Canadian magazine has a couple of it’s own blogs. Steve Maich looks at the buzz around the bubble.

For one thing, there are wild discrepancies in the estimates of how many blogs are actually out there. Some figure the number is as high as 30 million worldwide. But once you strip away pseudo-blogs that are really ads or scam traps, and subtract dormant sites, the numbers plunge precipitously. A couple of sites dedicated to tracking blog traffic estimate only about two to four million blogs are actively maintained.

I’ll take god-blogs as an example. If you believed The Blogdom of God there are thousands of god-bloggers. But take a look at the community list at The Truth Laid Bear.
It’s a stew of abandoned blogs, aggregators, repeats, and well known blogs that haven’t used many blog services to raise their profile. It is misrepresenting the reality of a sub-set of blogs.
A professional technican needs to step in and clean it up. But they can’t be expected to do that for free. So a catch 22 remains.
As well meaning as the intent behind it may be, it is technically sloppy and owner driven.

I’m not quite sure Maich is looking at the explosion of blogs in other countries as tools to put a blog online become very user friendly. That having been said, I don’t read Japanese or Chinese dialects. I can’t even read Canadian french blogs.

Next Maich takes a look at the Pew Internet & American Life Project 2004 project that said 27% of those polled read blogs regularly

This little comedy routine played itself out 143 times in a survey of just over 1,300 people. But that didn’t stop the believers from trumpeting that blog readership soared 58 per cent in 2004. What they often fail to point out is that the overwhelming majority of blogs get almost no traffic. According to data from SiteMeter and other tracking services, more than 99 per cent get fewer than 10 hits a day. Even the ones that do attract readers don’t hold their attention very well. The same reports suggest that the average blog reader stays on a site for just 90 seconds.

Blogs can be a great resource when something is going on and readers are looking for specific information. Examples here at BDBO are SARS, the Bali bombing, tsunami links, links to the Gomery inquiry, the London bombings and the Malaysian government pressure on a well known blogger.

And what about that explosive growth? Pew issued an update to its survey earlier this summer, and found that in the first few months of 2005, readership abruptly flatlined at about 25 per cent of Internet users.

And then he hits on one of my pet peeves and something Dave Sifry brought up in his State of the Blogosphere 2005 10 days ago.

Perhaps it’s because blogs are plagued by the same problems that have pervaded the Net from day one. Many sites are dumping grounds for every kind of online sewage, from virulent hatred to simple-minded polemics and laughable hoaxes. And with thousands of new voices joining the fray every day, separating the insightful from the inane is only getting more cumbersome. As a result, people are naturally migrating to the blogs they know and trust, usually by prominent writers or celebrity commentators. In other words, the blogs that matter are quickly becoming just another extension of the dreaded MSM.

That became apparent last week in the god-blogs when a well funded lobby group added bloggers to their media roster for a political rally in the US.
Christianity Today Weblog had a look at what the bloggers wrote, what event promoters were attempting to get across, and what the bloggers missed. In the research I did on the coverage, what few comments there were on the event blogs varied from ho hum to ideological, to interesting, to funny, to obnoxious.
Didn’t play well inside most of the US, attempts to take it a bit beyond the border were met with well meaning but I believe unintended defensiveness.

Since there is so much hype directed at businesses regarding blogging, I fully expect more US god-bloggers to be asked to cover events.
The first GodBlogCon will be held at Biola U in California in October.
There is room for 300 people interested in the topics offered.
Niche-specific and geographically specific.
Blog conferences have been done for a few years now and it’s difficult to gauge what the benefits to the larger community are. They are a bit like an office get together I think, somewhat less intense than game conventions.

This MacLean’s article is essentially looking at the hype directed toward business (biz-blogs) and what they will miss out on if they don’t start blogging.

I’ll go one further. Some of us that enjoy and promote this medium have to wade through drearily designed blogs that are so covered in ads and links and other kinds of words, that interesting content is lost.

What is behind the belief that that the more links I have, the more ads on the sidebars pay for the blog, and the more aggregator and site buttons there are makes for…a busier and productive blog?

Take time to read a few web design sites. The ads can be wildly anti-message to the posts.
Head over to to Pro-blogger in Australia. It is one of many blogs teaching people how to make money And bloggers and to-be bloggers flood in to look for what they think will be an easy way to make money from blogging. It isn’t easy.

The blogs I most enjoy are updated regularly. I don’t expect media level posts. I expect readable and honest ones where I can interact with the blogger without ongoing technical burps (not the bloggers fault) and extra steps like registration.
Most god-blogs get the kind of traffic Dialog: Bursting the Bubble looked at in a small survey in 2004.
It’s time a new study of this subdivision was done.
I think the readerships are down, not up.
And US god-blogs will remain dominant because internal politics brings readers and interacting with other countries isn’t necessary to achieve the readership most look for.
I continue to applaud and encourage bloggers reaching past who they know to explore the blogosphere.

Many recognize they are attacting readers by posting about more than church and politics or just spitting back MSM material.
I think a lot of bloggers are realistic, not buying into hype and enjoying their blogs, being interactive and with respectful to more than their neighbourhood.
As a reader that enjoyment comes back to me.

Many blogger no longer go the route of transparency with hit counters and disclosure. (readers might not click on a hit counter understanding it’s not that reliable, if they even know what it is)
Why not? Technology?
There have been so many well intentioned computer technologists offer bloggers tools, only to have to bow out under the economic and time pressures.

Many bloggers are waking up to the fact there is global access to their blogs.
Contempt and carelessness expressed at ‘the other’; be they readership outside their political party, their country or their ideology, bloggers are learning, ‘the other’ doesn’t need to come back.

I received a well known and gentle reminder from US friends to their none US god-blog Canuck buddy.
As much as I know it, as much as I try to cut slack and understand, as much as I try to keep remembering; sectors of US religious believers were weaned on evangelical=patriotism=right evangelical=conservative=Republican=right.(insert favorite combination here)

Many US god-bloggers find politics inseparable from faith, if they can’t reference and dialogue with other bloggers in the terms they are comfortable with, misunderstanding flares like a spark to tinder. I don’t think we need to bow to the labels. I think we need to work individually to move past them and I applaud the efforts I see online to do so.

I genuinely believe it doesn’t occur to readers that they may be at a blog where the owner doesn’t vote Republican or Democrat. It doesn’t occur to them that these bloggers don’t use the labels of definition easily or at all within the readers cultural and religious context.
It doesn’t occur to us at times we are at a blog in another country and that bloggers knowledge of the ‘correct labels, political interests, denomination’ and ways of looking at the world are different; not ‘anti- not other, not wrong.’

The internet became available to us none geeks in 1995 with the release of Microsoft Windows 95. That was only 10 years ago. Hardware and software costs had to come down. Blog platforms and the tools we can use were designed by computer techs and given to any of us that wanted to use them. and haven’t been around that long.

Blogging isn’t going away, nor is the hype, the scams and the scramble to learn to find readers.
Most bloggers aren’t in this for the money or the acceptance into perceived power circles. And there will always be media who don’t get this. In the three + years I’ve blogged, I’ve been challenged, taught, mentored and helped. I’ve made friends I never would have otherwise. I’ve seen solid sense, wisdom, kindness.
And I have had some terrific shared laughs. Media can’t give me those benefits the way blogging can. We’ll keep doing what we do because it’s a privilege, it’s available and it’s fun.
But overall, I think the bubble needs to burst.