The WSJ has a regular section called Real Time Exchange where they discuss technology trends and allow reader feedback. Today they reviewed reader feedback on weblogs. One guy (John Kelly) wrote:
I have two blogs that I occasionally update, but I lose interest when it seems I am the only one reading them for the most part. Might as well write in a Word document on my computer and store it on the hard disk with the same result. I still occasionally blog in the hope that people will stumble across it when using search engines and hit words or phrases I've used. I don't visit many blogs mostly because it can be really time consuming and is not really a good use of time for what you get back for your reading effort. Also, unless the bloggers post regularly, it's easy to lose interest in their blog and then stop checking their blog altogether soon after.
I'm dating myself, but I remember a forerunner of blogging: Citizen's Band radio. CB back in its heyday was the 1970's version of blogging, for everyone with a radio and microphone could give their opinion and hear others do the same. Less than five years later, mainstream CB was pretty much a ghost town except for a few diehards. It was clearly a fad that came and went. I think that blogging may be the CB of the 21st century, and it too may go the way of CB, personal Web pages of the 1990s ("here's a picture of my dog, Taffy"), and TV Westerns. People love the ability to give their opinion, but soon tire of doing that when they discover that everyone else is too busy giving their opinion to bother to read theirs!
I think that "professional blogs" of magazines, newspapers, networks and other journalistic entities will continue to grow a bit over time and survive. But I see noncommercial "personal blogs" going into the ash heap of the Internet just as CB went into the ash heap of personal communications not too long after it was the craze of the nation and wave of the future.
More commentary to follow later in the day...