Blog Age
I’ve been a blogger since 21st November 2005, which means I’ve been blogging for just over 2 and a half years. In that time I’ve seen various blogs come and go: some are no longer updated any more, some are updated sporadically, and some continue to be updated regularly.
I’m also constantly surprised by the fact that some blogs which I consider to be “well-known” have not been going as long as mine, when I’ve assumed that they’ve been around for ages, but it was just that I’d only recently discovered them…
It started me thinking: how long does the average blogger keep blogging for?
Well, according to a post from October 2006 the average top 100 blogger has been going 33.8 months. That’s not the same thing, however.
Nor is the average age of the blogger (apparently the average US blogger is white, 37.6 years old, and earns $55,000).
The closest I could find is this:
Out of the 175,000 new blogs created each day, however, very few will make it past three monthsProblogger
…but unfortunately, ProBlogger seems (not entirely unexpectedly) to focus on professional bloggers, as opposed to those of us who do it for our own amusement, and so seeks to focus on ways to have the right content to attract people to your site, whereas for a personal site, the right content is whatever you want to talk about.
I can even find stuff that tells me about abandoned blogs:
In fact, 1.09 million blogs were one-day wonders, with no postings on subsequent days … the average duration of the remaining 1.63 million abandoned blogs was 126 daysBlogging: Statistics and Demographics
But what I want to know is, what is the average age of the non-abandoned blog (by which I mean one that has been updated at least once in the last 30 days). And that information seems harder to find…
There’s the Bloglebrity Index of course, which determines how much of a blog celebrity you are by how many people have linked to you recently (not many for me recently, boo hoo) and defines the average age of different blog ‘rankings’ — e.g. ‘C’ list bloggers have an average age of 260 days. But that doesn’t give you the average age of blogs as a whole, nor does it seem that this average age figure has changed since the bloglebrity index was first put together in 2006, so there’s no guarantee that it’s accurate either…
Of course, I can look at the blogs I read, but that’s hardly scientific – but a quick analysis of 10 of them shows…
- JBVoices — blogging since March 2007
- MilanToMinsk — blogging since September 2007
- MeyerWeb — blogging since December 1999
- Green Beast — blogging since March 2005
- Booked Out — blogging since June 2006
- The Goldfish — blogging since February 2005
- Bruce Lawson — blogging since September 2003
- Pixeldiva — blogging since March 2000
- The Perorations of Lady Bracknell — blogging since September 2005
- Whitehall Webby — blogging since April 2007
…but since I’ve been blogging, a number of blogs have become abandoned or semi-abandoned: Punkchip has posted once since April 2007; Blether has managed 8 posts since last October; Armcurl with only one post since this February…
But out of the quick glance at ten blogs I read regularly (and I do read more, so apologies if you’re not mentioned!) the average blog I read has been going for just over 3.5 years, with a median around 36 months. Of course, this in itself proves absolute bugger-all about the average blogger. All it tells me about is the ten sites I picked to look at…
So instead, I want to conduct an entirely unscientific straw poll. If you are a blogger or ex-blogger (and if you read this) can you please tell me:
- Who are you?
- where are you? (country)?
- how long have you been blogging for?
- if you no longer blog, how long had you been blogging at the time you stopped?
Again, this won’t tell me much more: unless I get a lot of responses… but there’s no harm in asking!
And meanwhile, if you do hear tell of the ‘average blogger’, do feel free to pass the information on!
Shannon says:
June 18th, 2008 at 5:54 am
Well, that’s how long I’ve been at my current site on wordpress. Before that I was on LJ (thumbs down) for a while, and those archives are in my link list, although even I get bored looking back on those old things. So I guess since October 2006 I’ve been blogging. I have a vague recollection of blogging on xanga some time ago before that, but I deleted that because it was completely worthless. Oh, and of course you know I’m in the U.S.
Jeremy Gould says:
June 18th, 2008 at 9:10 am
Hey Jack, thanks for the confidence in my writing
A year is a long time in blogland…
Andy Mabbett says:
June 18th, 2008 at 11:10 am
I’ve only been blogging for a few months; but I’ve been posting blog-like thoughts on Usenet, and occasionally web fora, since about 1995. Is the medium the message? I don’t think it is.
JackP says:
June 18th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
In terms of the question I was asking, the medium is the message – because I was wanting to find out the age of the average blog, not how long people had been blogging for…
Ladybeams says:
June 18th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
My oldest blog is from Sept. 2007. I had a blog for my “brick and morter” business, but didn’t really understand the whole blogging concept, so I didn’t post to it like I should have. That blog is now obsolete,just like the business. I have a total of 3 blogs now that I try to update at least 3 times a week.
Andy Mabbett says:
June 18th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
Surely that’s a bit like jugging someone’s experience as an author, by looking at the age of their pen?
Besides, that’s not what you said: “It started me thinking: how long does the average blogger keep blogging for?”
Mike Cherim says:
June 18th, 2008 at 2:19 pm
This is pretty interesting, Jack. I was wondering about this myself. I expect to keep my blog forever, though there may be periods in my life where I won’t be able to or want to post for a while, but to me blogging is a forever thing. I tell my clients that as well when I make a blog for them. I try to make it as forward-compatible and as durable as possible. I tell them that it’s the last blog they should ever need. Of course that’s not entirely true if technology changes force a different opinion.
Steve says:
June 18th, 2008 at 9:30 pm
You’re a stalwart of my blogroll too!
I kind of agree with Mike’s comments. It’s nice to think of having a blog forever. I get bored from time to time, and recent work commitment has found me blogging less, but I wouldn’t want to stop. And it’s good to know you can keep something running long term.
Some compare blogs to diaries. I always started writing in those with great enthusiasm on January 1st only to give up around mid-February. So tt’s good now to keep the perennial blog.
Rob Mason says:
June 19th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
Good article chap.
I’ve been blogging apparently since February 2007, but is probably a few months before that on an earlier hosted version of my blog. I do have peaks and troughs in terms of number of posts, but that is more to do with time (have 2 kids, one on the way and a full time job!) mixed with a little bit of motivation.
Also, there is no “average blogger”. It’s like trying to find “Middle England” or “the general public”.
Mike says:
June 20th, 2008 at 3:28 pm
Guilty as charged.
Unfortunately, as is sometimes the way, my life overtook telling people about my life. I used to spend way too much time on the thing, it now seems more productive and sociable to just pick up the phone and tell my mum what I’ve been up to or reveal all over a few jars of a Friday with my mates, than it is to spend half an hour a day writing about it.
One day, when I’m bored I might pick it up again, until then my FB status or my twitter feed will probably be as close to blogging as I get…
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