The suicide of my virtual self
Ghosts of blogging haunt net cemetery
March 26, 2007
The Sunday Times
IN the latest entry on her personal weblog, Lindsay Lohan, the hard-partying Hollywood actress, was in characteristically bubbly form. "Hey guys, I'm soooo sooo sorry I haven't written in a while!!" she wrote. She was heading off to New York for two days of photo-shoots, then to Toronto in Canada for a week of filming, then back to Los Angeles again. The entry ended: "I just wanted to check in, I'll try and write more ... xx LL." It has been a long wait for any Lohan fans who may be hoping for an update. That entry was posted on October 15, 2003. Lohan's blog has since taken its place in the internet's fastest-growing graveyard - of an estimated 200 million blogs that have been started, then abandoned.
The extraordinary failure rate of online diaries and claims that interest in blogging will soon begin a precipitous slide are sparking an intriguing debate about the future of self-expression on the internet and whether blogs, once seen as revolutionary, are destined to become a footnote in the history of computing.
To the embarrassment of millions of internet users - from Hollywood celebrities such as Lohan, Melanie Griffith and Barbra Streisand to countless ordinary parents, workers and would-be poets - the evidence of failed diary-keeping cannot be easily erased from search engines that continue to provide links to blogs that have lain dormant for years.
Some internet analysts call them "ghost blogs", lingering reminders of a cultish enthusiasm for self-expression that is rapidly wearing off. Others liken the abandonment of blogs to "the suicide of your virtual self". At least one internet writer blames the blogging culture for helping to turn the internet into a "dictatorship of idiots". According to research by a firm of US technology analysts, the blogging phenomenon may have peaked last October, when 100,000 new blogs were being created every day. As well as personal diaries these included corporate, professional, celebrity and other specialist blogs.
Yet the Gartner research firm also concluded that the trend would level off this year, with perhaps 100 million people still blogging worldwide. Other analysts predict that number will fall to 30 million. "A lot of people have been in and out of (blogging)," said Daryl Plummer of Gartner. "Everyone thinks they have something to say until they're put on stage and asked to say it."
"Hello everyone! I have been remiss in not writing to you sooner!" begins Griffith's latest - and last - entry, dated March 18, 2005. At least Griffith bothered to write something. On Streisand's official website, a front page link reads: "Click here to read Barbra's blog." The link leads to a blank page.
Research suggests that most ghost blogs are abandoned simply because their authors run out of things to say, have not got the time to write or have moved on to more exciting internet trends, such as posting home videos on YouTube or collecting new friends on MySpace.
Not all bloggers are disheartened by the apparent peaking of the trend; many argue that the best blogs will survive and the world will ultimately be a better place if it does not have to read entries like this from Lohan: “Hey everyoneeeeeeeeeeeee!! Watttup? “I just wanna appologize for not writing in so long . . . I’ll try and write more, but GO SEE FREAKY FRIDAY WHEN IT COMES OUTTTT!!!! xoxoxox-oxox L.”
And here's a little something from a man who must surely rank amongst the nobility of Logic class geeks (much along the lines of, "if a blog dies alone in a deserted forest, does it make a beep as it bombs"):-
http://ravenparadox.com/?p=27
And so it was written by The Brown Pie Piece @ 11:18 am
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