An interesting but debatable point has been raised by John C. Dvorak. Dvorak feels that the so-called Blogging Revolution has bitten the dust and that Blogging can't become the future of journalism as predicted due to two reasons:

  • Massive abandonment of blogs with the writers getting bored or too tired to cope up with regular writing
  • “Big Media” co-opting the blogosphere that would undermine the potential and originality of blogging

John's observations are based upon a whitepaper study by Perseus that reveals that of an estimated 4.12 million blogs, created on Blog-City, BlogSpot, Diaryland, LiveJournal, Pitas, TypePad, Weblogger and Xangaan, an alarming 66% have been either permanently or temporarily abandoned. The report makes a nice conclusive simile:

An iceberg is constantly dissolving into sea water, and the majority of blogs started are dissolving into static, abandoned web pages. Right now, though, this iceberg is moving so quickly into arctic waters that it is gaining mass faster than it is losing it. The key is that an iceberg is never what it appears, and so it is with today’s blogging community.

I think that the first point, while holding true, could hardly harm blogging keeping in mind that the growth rate of blogs is faster than the attrition rate. And what about the blogs that pay for the hosting, abandoning free blog-service might be easy but these are committed bloggers. The disturbing point could infact be the second one, faux blogs authored by professional writers and corporations and pretending like blog; the blogquivalent of paid editorials or advertorials. Imagine somebody deciding whether the post is as per guidelines or not before you post something on your blog, or worse still somebody telling you what to write on. But will they affect the real blogs? As long as genuine bloggers are there I think both can co-exist.