An interesting Ryze discussion regarding weblogs and readership

Gautam Ghosh wrote: > hi folks, > >Is the world of blogs destined to remain a very tall pyramid, with a handful of blogs that are visited by most and the majority of blogs in the bottom of the pyramid...being visited by none other than the author and a couple of friends? > >How does a blog create a buzz around it and get linked to 1000s of other blogs and eventually get picked by non-bloggers too? > >Does the nature of the content disproportionately affect traffic? >

Interesting question, there is statistical evidence see: an important post on the topic from Clay Shirky, that suggests that only a handful of weblogs will get the majority of attention.  But one must ask themselves why do they blog.  Is it for the recognition and the ego satisfaction of the hits and subsequent email, or is it because one likes to document their investigations of the web, the flow of their thinking, and their increasing understanding of a topic.  I find the buzz boring.  For example, Ray Ozzie's site got thousands of hits even when he neglects it for months.   So, the number of hits says nothing about the importance of the thinking.  I find following the thread of an argument through a number of blogs fun and it is, most fun, when the writing is personal, informal, and small.