4 thoughts on “why they quit”
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I'm Jill Walker Rettberg, Co-Director of the Center for Digital Narrative at the University of Bergen, and Professor of Digital Culture. Blogging here since October 2000.
H脗kon Styri
Hastily translated, the main points are as follows.
According to a Perseus survey, 26% of blogs that weren’t updated in the last two months were abandoned the same day they were started.
Why do people quit blogging after a short time? One reason is quite well known to traditional authors as well. It’s quite hard to write without an audience. Writing for a blog that gets no traffic may be the reason some people quit.
The next reason I suspect may be a reason for quitting is lack of purpose, or no defined project for a blog. Many bloggers are of course joyfully writing about everything and anything in their blogs, but a blog with no purpose is likely to be at risk.
If purpose is the strategy of a blogger, ideas would be the stuff behind each post in the blog. If a blogger gets no ideas that she considers worthy of blogging, I guess she’s in the state commonly known as writers block.
Anyway, these are just my thoughts about why so many blogs are abandoned after a short time. I’m happy for comments, and it would be nice if someone did some research. (I believe Jill may know about students of blogology.)
H脗kon Styri
Ouch, I forgot one obvious reason. There are a few blogging projects that have a short time span by definition. A holiday or travel blog, or a blog started for the purpose of completing a blogging class at some uni.
It’s the project/purpose problem, but it’s not lack of purpose. It’s just that the project is short lived.
Erik
That makes perfect sense. I have just started a blog, and have one entry so far. It is a purpose problem. What goes on it, what is worth going on it, what would people want to know? I am about to overcome that, though, and just see what develops.
Eirik
Joho’s old motto – “Let’s just see how it goes” – sums it up quite neatly in my opinion. Anyhoo, as H脗kon point out the problems are by no means unique to blogging. As a writer of paper-based books and articles I have very limited knowledge of my readership. Sales numbers don’t really tell me how many people actually finish a book, neither does library lending statistics, BTW. And as for the lack of purpose or direction when writing a book – well, tell me about it! 馃槈