I’m pruning my blogroll as I’m moving it over to The Old Reader, and I’m discovering how many blogs closed down in 2012. Was 2012 some sort of a fateful year of blogging?
The 800+ blogroll turned out to be much smaller than it was supposed to be. I will need to populate it with robust blogs that are not about to die.
How can you read or even look through so many blogs?
For me much less blogs, only the best ones, would be ideal.
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That’s what the blogroll is for. You get a list of the titles and the first few lines of new posts and can scroll down them very fast.
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I’ve also noticed a precipitous drop in blog post traffic. I’ll admit that my own blog has also been sort of dead. Maybe there’s a writer’s block epidemic (almost) everywhere.
I found a couple of recently active blogs, though, by searching topics of interest to me on blogsearch.google.com. Then use “search tools” to display only posts less than a day old, less than a week old, etc.
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I don’t have data to prove this but blogging activity is linked to the economy and the anima of society. Much like the suffering and struggle during the WWI and WWII inspired many writers in their aftermath, so has the 2008 economic crash. A lot of blogs started by then, but now that the sequels, and changes have been accepted there’s much less scattered energy that inspires people to write. All the energy has been channeled and society’s soul is quiet again, soothed, frozen and asleep once again.
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This is a VERY interesting explanation. It is true that I started blogging at the peak of the crisis.
This idea is brilliant.
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It’s rather sad.
I post notifications about my blog posts on Facebook, and some people don’t read the blog post, but they comment on the Facebook announcement, which gives the title only. I suppose it’s the equivalent of just reading the headlines in the newspaper.
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Oh, that is sad. I have no idea what comment one can leave just based on the title.
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If the title sounds like it confirms or contradicts something they already know, they’ll be happy to jump in and share their opinions, even if they can’t know for sure what’s being communicated in the post.
This week I started with The Old Reader, which so far I like. I don’t yet know how it will handle hundreds of feeds though.
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Oh, this happened to me, too! A person came here to rant against the title of my post she saw on somebody’s feed. The rant was filled with really weird assumptions about what she thought my post said. Which my post really didn’t say. 🙂
The Old Reader is handling the feed well so far.
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I’ve been using Newsblur and I quite like it, but I only have about 7 blogs on my list, not 800!
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I hope mine is one of them. . . 🙂
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
Clarissa's Blog 
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