Is there anything we might be able to do to convince all those would-be bloggers who wrote 4 or 5 posts and then gave up to crash their dead blogs ?
I hate following an organic search result, only to find a blog that has a grand total of 5 posts, the last of which was 7 months ago.
There are 2 gazillion blogs created every day, all but 3 of which are destined to go the way of the platypus and the loon.
How about a feature in Blogger and Word Press, where most of these are created, that detonates the blog and all archives after 60 days of inactivity.
Anybody else have the misfortune to see dead blogs ?
Got any ideas ?
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{ 27 comments… read them below or add one }
You hit a nerve there with me Mike.
I’ve seen too many dead blogs for my likeing. For me I recall it peaked middle of last year – a new blog; a frenzy of posts; and then nothing … not even a good bye post – what an insult to any reader.
“This blog will disintegrate if not used for 30 days.” Now that’s thinking outside of the box – now only if it could be done, we’d sweap up quite a bit of trash.
My theory is that many people have heard how absolutley awesome a blog is and they must have one etc., etc., but reality hits pretty quick when they realize, shit, like we have to do work here? – no thanks: I want my seo as easy as I can get it.
You said it all, Martin.
The relatively low entry fee into blogging brought (brings) out far too many people that aren’t really ready to write for a living.
The biggest drawback is that they haven’t actually done any living and can sum up their whole lives in 4-5 posts.
They’d all be better off on MySpace uploading a different photo of themselves every day.
Monday – Smiling
Tuesday – Laughing
Wednesday – Sexy
Thursday – Mad
Friday – Party Face
Saturday – Sad
Sunday – Angelic
Lather.Rinse.Repeat.
Right on. The low entry barrier to blogging is essentially a good thing but that should not be the reason to do it.
Sorry, the MySpace thing … I’m still laughing
Every now and then I find a good one in the muck and mire and pull it out to show off !
Google’s blog search does tell you the last time it was updated, although it may not stand out enough when you’re perusing organic search results quickly and clicking.
If Google (and others) could integrate that type of “last updated” functionality into regular searches, highlighting out the blogs that way (since regular sites are much less frequently updated) that might make a lot of sense.
Taking it further, I wonder if a search engine would be willing to color-code blogs in a way that makes things more obvious – which are more regularly updated, when, etc.
I’m not so sure I agree with any of the comments so why not take a proactive approach and build a tool that emails the author regularly to encourage them to post more often rather than obliterating it? One of the easy ways to drive traffic seo is to comment elsewhere and that could be a conversation starter just like what I’ve blogged about recently. Comments could become posts and fodder. But I will question the motive of blogging to make a living – I don’t think that is the purpose.
So to sum up: let’s create a tool that encourages inactive bloggers by connecting them with other (slow/inactive) bloglings in their interest areas to get the conversation started. Too often we want to hook up with a “popular blog” but that defeats the purpose of being able to voice individual opinions.
Experimenting Rocks,
Harsha Raghavan
http://www.harsharaghavan.com
Hey Ben – I never do a blog search, just organic searches. May be some of my undoing.
I still think if you’re no longer updating, it’s no longer a blog.
Thanks for adding to the post with thoughtful questions and suggestions.
Hi Harsha – Why in the world would I want to send email to 50 million blog owners that don’t want to post anymore ?
What earthly good would it do me, the blogosphere or the internet community ?
None. Absolutely none. Nada. Zip. Zero. Zilch.
Those dead blogs are cluttering up the search results, just like the “scraper splogs” are doing. We don’t need to try to get them to clutter it up even more, we need them to go away.
Why don’t you proactively build a tool that will email them and force them to crash their worthless splogs and dead blogs.
That will make you a hero and a legend.
Thanks for trying to add to the conversation.
Harsha – yeah, I’m with Mike here. These so-called bloggers gave up. Fair enough: they got bored, they couldn’t handle it, they can’t write : whatever.
Why would active bloggers waste their time trying to get these people to blog again? It doesn’t make sense. And I could care less about them getting back into blogging.
What does make sense is getting rid of splogs. They scrape keyword rich content (usually steal it) and dump it into a blog in one swoop. There’s no conversation going there, it’s just a shameless tactic to get higher google rankings.
Dead blogs aren’t as bad because at least they tried. But they’re clogging up the system big time. Try doing research on any topic and you have to waste time sorting the dead blogs to get to the real stuff.
There’s so much rubbish out there it’ll amaze you.
Thanks for agreeing Martin.
I’ve got several thousand other things to do before I even think of saving the Dead Blogosphere.
Yup, same here. You’d have to pay me – and pay me good – for that job.
Generalising this for all blogs is kind of immature IMHO. Let me give you one example (if you search I am sure you would find a real blog for the same):
Some time back there was this natural disaster Tsunami. Someone relief worker started a blog where he shared his experience, his everyday encounters and interaction with local people.
Now the work is over and he is back in his hometome, studying or doing his 9-5 job. Accoding to you and your friends here we should delete that blog. Wait a second, let me go and re-read this post of yours in case you have made some exception for some quality blogs which have time bound area of activity…… nope ! nothing in that 9 line post of yours that talk about these kind of blogs.
well.. let me post link to that blog
http://tsunamihelp.blogspot.com/
check it out. last post was on may 11th. Already more then 60 days old. go delete it. Now please don’t try to give an excuse.
It could have been a nice post only if you had spend more then then 3 minutes on the topic.
BTW if I search for “dead blogs” and this “Active” blogs comes in the result it would be not so different from those other useless, full of crap dead blogs using shameless tactic to get higher google rankings (sorry could not find proper wordings so copied it from the comments about).
Hi Jack -
It seems to me that you might be, uh ….wrong. The type of blog you speak about is exactly the type I don’t want to run into. It would be a Dead Blog. D-E-A-D.
I won’t bother with any more of your comment, as it’s not really worth the time it would take, nor would you be able to effectively defend yourself.
Picking on those with little knowledge about a subject doesn’t appeal to me and is a Lose-Lose situation.
Thanks for coming by. I’m glad you felt like you needed to defend free, worthless blogs. Seems to be your specialty.
Of course, it’s people like you Jack who have a hissy-fit over such things and make yourself look stupid – and to take a cheap shot implying it’s “only” a 9 line post written in 3 minutes … well! What does that mean? Makes you more ignorant or simply petty.
Now the work is over, eh … gee, I beg to differ. In fact I would suggest that your dead blog example SHOULD be still running because I’m 99.999% positive the work is not done yet. But hey, the media isn’t focusing on it so lets just stop – no goodbye post … nothing. Just one day it stopped. You see this sort of thing a million times (and it doesn’t matter what topic it is) – the writing stops because they get bored and/or move onto other things. It’s a DEAD blog. Full Stop.
Just like your “Silicon Splash” blog – 7 posts in 3 weeks and then nothing since May…
Just like your “Sudoku meets Kakuro” blog – 10 posts within weeks and then noting since mid-May
I see a trend. I see more dead blogs.
Think before you comment next time.
Thanks Martin, that was what I was thinking.
I didn’t think I’d see many more comments here, and I’m more than surprised that your dead blog post has stirred up even this amount of controversy.
Search engines could potentially do something even with organic search.
1. Identify it as a blog.
2. Give me a last updated date.
3. Color-code inactive blogs somehow.
It’s probably not that hard to do. Maybe some smaller search engine could add this kind of feature (or blog search engines should DEFINITELY do this) to give them a little added-value.
Hey Ben – I kinda thought this would stir up even more thought than it has.
You are exactly right when you say that a search engine could differentiate itself with this kind of feature.
Thanks for adding value to this conversation.
I just read _Unleashing the Ideavirus_ online a few weeks ago. I’m glad it hadn’t been deleted for the crime of being old.
No, it wasn’t published in blog format, it was a PDF. So what? Good ideas do not necessarily expire within 60 days.
Hey Chris – The post was about dead blogs, not dead PDF’s.
The very definition of a blog is ” frequently updated”.
I have no poblem with old info, just dead blogs.
I publish using Wordpress, because it simplifies management of comments, pingbacks, categorization, etc.
Does that mean I explicitly or implicitly assume responsibility for posting every day, or even every week? No way!
You might say I am not a blogger at all due to my infrequent posting, but if so, then “dead blog” seems to be an oxymoron. If it’s a blog, it can’t be dead; if it’s dead, it isn’t a blog.
Chris,
A blog doesn’t have to be published to EVERY day, just updated frequently and not static.
Once you quit updating or adding content, it’s no longer a blog, no matter the freakin’ software.
Of course, if all you do is repurpose other peoples content and never add your own original content, it’s not a blog it’s a splog ( spam blog ).
A blog is a website.
On a long enough timeline, all blogs become static.
You’re right, BC.
I never really looked THAT far into the future … til now.
Thanks for the crushing blow
“go the way of the platypus and the loon”
Umm. I wasn’t aware either example were endangered, let alone gone. The loon is more Minnesota-ish and Wisconsinish, the duckbill platypus kinda like Australia/New Zealand for their most common habitat, as I recall. The Dodo, wooly mammoth, saber-tooth tiger, Ronald Reagan, they are examples of ‘past their prime’ and gone.
I sort of agree with some points a couple people make, that there are some dead blogs with something worthwhile. And I agree they could well be moved off the daily landscape.
How about coordinating, and have the Library of Congress archive all ‘dead blogs’, move them to a secure location, complete a profile where available, and after 3 months initial archive, they would be available through the LOC.
Partly my reason for archiving instead of deleting is an SF story that I read some years ago. Where 20 years after you die, your computer records are unsealed for non-commercial, anonymous research. Social science interns and students may have a use for abandoned blogs during particular time frames.
But it would be nice to clear up the clutter.
Nahhhh, sorry Brad. The real story is that the loon’s and the platypaues have been gone for years and the remnants you see are govenment plants left there to spy on other wildlife.
Not many people knew about it, but we might as well break the news right now !
If you want to be in charge of Dead Blogs, I think the post of Director of Dead Blogs is going to be open in a few weeks, so maybe we can get you planted there and you can keep an eye on them in that mountainside, underground location or the new secure facility in the desert.
Thanks for stopping by and I appreciate your time and the comment
As I type this, my blog is down. My whole server is down. So my webmail is down. For a short span in ‘Net Time, I don’t exist. Anytime this happens (not often, thankfully), my guys come back with really great upgrades… but, ARGH! I need a “Magic Redirect Custom 404 Page”. And a time-machine. And a cloning machine.
Sorry to hear about that Les.
Hope it comes back soon.