The Death of Blogging

Like any blogger, I am addicted to hits. Why are the numbers up, why are they down? Where have people come from and can I snare an IP address to work out who people are? I check statcounter more regularly than I do Facebook which probably makes me less of a person but as a Statistics Masters graduate and a numbers nerd, it was ever going to be thus.

One thing I have noticed through this addictive pastime is that for as long as the past year or so I have had very few hits from new sources. Don't get me wrong, there have been some excellent new blogs which have kindly linked to me (and linkage has generally been reciprocated) but in my first year of blogging getting hits from new sources was a regular occurrence such was the rate of new blogs taking off and interest in blogs from numerous media sources.

Maybe I am not proactive enough in seeking out blogs I can just directly ask for links from but the crux of the matter is that there are less new blogs breaking through out there, the retirals are outnumbering the startups. The Scottish scene has already been hit by the hanging up of the Scottish Unionist and Malc in the Burgh keyboards with fellow Total Politics 'top-tenner' Caron significantly (and regrettably) scaling back her post rate (albeit due to ill health). Many other blogs are starting and stopping with activation energy seemingly in short supply.

The difficulties in getting a blog up and running are probably greater now than they were even a year or two ago. I get the impression the rate of new readers of blogs in general has slowed dramatically with those that do read blogs having their personal favourites and sticking to them. One of the reasons I created a links page of some 200 websites (and growing) was to ensure that I read different voices and get different viewpoints on a regular basis. More often than not it's the established (perhaps even dangerously cosy) club of UK bloggers that have new posts available to read on the real-time feed. If someone was to start a blog today and looked to break into the Total Politics top 100 they would surely balk at the prospect.

Perhaps, just perhaps, blogging has already had its heyday? If it can happen to MySpace it can happen to Blogger.

Where is the latest wave of angry upstarts energetically tearing strips off the establishment with their fists of blogging fury? Pretenders to the throne are generally too deeply wedded to the party line to be serious contenders as the radical new political voice.

There are, of course, long-established beacons of light. The Iain Dale and Guido Fawkes duopoly has a healthy incongruence. Iain has a straighter approach, directly tackling policy issues and, more often than not, his calm dissemblance points out the frustrating inadequacies in Labour, Lib Dem and often Tory positions on any number of issues. Guido is less interested in policy and more interested in bringing down the troughers and ending the corruption in Westminster.

Both are independent, both have plenty of material to work with and, despite their differing approcahes to blogging, both are now pretty much indispensable.

Beyond that however, the highest profile bloggers are the Ben Brogans, the Paul Waughs, the Tom Harris', the Fraser Nelsons, the Nick Robinsons, the Dan Hannans, the John Prescotts. Bloggers who have recently muscled into the scene with relative ease, perhaps not appreciating the struggle for 'hits' that faces any new blogger. Journalists or MPs who arguably have business interests at heart rather than being unbiased seekers of truth.

Their online sites, although tremendous reads each in their own right, are merely an extension of the old world, the journalists vs the politicians with the public shut out of the debate and left to banter amongst themselves in the comment wilderness. With the luxury of regular work hours at their disposal to update their blogs, the true independent bloggers are always at a disadvantage snatching time in the early morning, lunchbreak or in the evening to contribute to the debate.

It is perhaps too self-indulgent to suggest that blogs ever bore a direct and imminent threat to the viability of newspapers but it's clear that newspaper companies are splattering the blogosphere with websites of their own in order to swamp the market and mitigate any risk that did exist.

Blogging only really took off after the 2005 general election. Is the online adventure effectively over before the next one in 2010?