Possumblog

Oh, that's just crazy.

Or maybe it's just a matter of consolidation.

Anyway, as you know, I gave up blogging over a year ago.

Now some of you might snicker and point to such things as this post for evidence to the contrary, but you have to admit, compared to those times in the distant past when I might post ten or twelve multi-hundred-word, thoughtily-involved, occasionally mildly humorous posts a day, the current version is about as close to moribund as Possumblog could be, short of actually, you know, being really for real, gone-on-to-my-reward dead.

Why do I mention this?

Because I noticed something peculiar the other day--over in the sidebar at the very bottom, I was ranked as a "Marauding Marsupial" on the The Truth Laid Bear's Ecosystem. And today? A "Large Mammal."

Now friends, that's just bizarre. In its prime when I was writing thousands of words a day, with traffic on the order of a couple thousand unique hits per day, it was exceedingly rare for Possumblog to ever even get past the Slimy Mollusc stage. Oh, there were the times when it might even get Adorable Rodent status, but Large Mammal!? I don't think that ever happened.

So why now? I don't post regularly, the content of what I do wind up posting is weaker than the roots of Joe Biden's hair plugs (and not even half as funny) and yet, at least for today, I'm ranked as number 838.

Well, for one, all the junk I wrote in the past is still up and available for Googleering, so I reckon even if I did actually die, the site would still be reasonably well-trafficked by people searching for "all the "dumb guys" are running a race but the good guys will give up and come over to the concession stand where you'll be waiting with a towel and a h".

Quite a comfort, there, eh?

But I think there's probably something else happening (and I'm sure someone else has probably already noticed it and commented on it, and I just haven't seen it), but I think the huge number of Citizen Journalists-type blogs are being replaced by a fewer, larger, groupier blogs.

Let's face it, writing full-time is difficult if you actually have a full-time job. It's also difficult to keep things fresh and topical and entertaining with a one-member staff (even if you're a comedic and intellectual giant such as myself). Over the years, my guess is people have developed an affinity for a more select number of sites, ones that they trust to deliver whatever counterbalance they might seek from the traditional media sources and that do so with a certain level of expected quality or competence. With those expection also come one forced by the available technology, namely that there's going to be a LOT of content, and near constant coverage of any story, and the general result of all that means more than one person is going to have to be writing the thing.

Sorta like those things people called "newspapers."

So, anyway, I say the number of working, useful, usable blogs is shrinking (although obviously the potential readership isn't), and I suppose Possumblog happens to be the accidental beneficiary of that shakeout. It's not quite dead enough, and apparently that's good enough to get some traffic these days.

WEIRDNESS UPDATE: Maybe yesterday's spike was just a fluke--today your humble marsupial is once again nothing higher than a Marauding Marsupial, ranked in the mid-2000s. (Which is still a good bit higher than I remember it being for most of the time I was doing a lot of blogging.)

Posted by Terry Oglesby at September 16, 2008 02:04 PM