I think there is a finite number of people who can regularly write interesting tidbits. Most are probably constrained by time, material and interest.

I think I created my first personal website circa 1995; at my peak, I probably had four running simultaneously. By 2001, I quit completely. I never blogged; I had blog-style content but never migrated over.

Personally, while I might have the material, the time issue is critical. Good writing takes effort and I simply prefer to do other things with my time. For the most part, these other activities (exercising, surfing, yoga, gardening, hiking, meditation, sleeping) are better for my overall well-being than writing.

There are plenty of dead/unmaintained websites, so don't feel that this is a blogosphere-specific apathy. Heck, there are plenty of dead/unmaintained scrapbooks, rock bands, vegetable gardens, kit cars, stamp collections, etc.

How are "active" blogs determined? We have blogs on WordPress.com that have not been posted to in many months, yet they are drawing thousands of page views a day. Is that an active blog?

I think the overall number of blogs - active or not - is less interesting than how much traffic the blogosphere is attracting. I bet that number is growing every day (but it's not a number that Technorati or any search engine can easily measure).

To echo cv's point, bloggin is an effort-reward proposition. Someone who can't blog well and regularly won't get a lot out of the experience and they'll go "inactive" pretty quickly.

That being said, blogging IMHO will follow a fairly typical adoption curve: an early adopter surge, followed by a longer gradual increase, which we are in now.

-----
http://techfold.com

Of course, I've always wondered about what percentage of new blogs were created by spammers, since automated blog creation software can easily outpace any puny human. And those would take up probably a significant portion of both the living and dead blogs.

Also, I think it's about the medium -- I've long joked about the move towards a post-literate society, and I think that while the educated middle class adult population may have reached a saturation point in terms of text bloggers, there's a whole world of kids who find it easier and more fun to do video and audio.

Then it becomes, "What do you define as a blog?" I'd get rid of spam blogs (though I realize it's an unrealistic goal), but add basically any tool for self-publishing that generates an RSS feed and content archive available to the public, including MySpace, Twitter, YouTube, etc.

I think its great news, because the inactive blogs have much, much better content.

Does anyone else care the chart has a typo? Mar 2006 should be Mar 2007. Or is this some kind of Web 2.0 calendar thing I haven't heard about?

I think a lot of people have realized that while setting up a blog is easy, relatively inexpensive and sexy, the process of writing one - even a bad one - takes a lot of time and energy, which is why many blogs are abandoned.

"The number of active blogs tracked by Technorati has stalled..."

Thank god!

A probably all-too-typical example of an abandoned log: I ran across a blog about a person's attempt to get fit. After several months, this person quit both exercising and blogging.

And now all that's left is a publicly-accessible record of failure. The blogosphere is riddled with such shipwrecks.

I can't ever seem to get my blog to work. I write and hit post and it vanishes. It's happened four times. I finally gave up. That was six months ago.

Nick another great tidbit-o-wisdom. Why do you have such a bad reputation for relevant content?

1) I think it's too early to generalize about the future of blogging, because this graph defines "blog" too narrowly. User content continues to pour online and soon there will be more ways to consolidate a person's online expressions into a single spot. This could lead to a continued growth in the "myspace-style" blogging arena. I think this plateau may simply reflect hitting the demographic transition point between tech people adoption (saturated now) and mainstream adoption, which may require ubiquitous broadband and even simpler ways to produce online content, and higher online comfort levels for mom and pop.

It would seem to have hit saturation with the target demographic. Unless of course baby boomers take to blogging in a larger fashion, which could happen but its not likely.

I think three other points are relavent:
1. People have time constraints, keeping up a "good" blog is difficult.
2. In the end blogging is just broadcasting, opinion, often badly, albiet with a comments section. People still want community, this is why online forums continue to remain popular and will so, blogs for the most part tend not to have the community feel.
3. Forums provide a measure of defense against spammers, people like walled gardens to meet in, not a comments section filled with Viagra advertising.

Its simple: compelling content takes both effort and talent. Those who try their hand at blogging often find what the student film maker finds--it is easy to appreciate good content and hard to make it. So, many will try, as the growing inactive blog count shows, but few will succeed. The impressive thing really though is that with such a low cost of entry and maintenance compared to most other media, few = 15 million, not 15,000.

Fifteen million active blogs? That's a big number! Does it take into account blogs maintained on sites such as MySpace and behind-the-firewall corporate blogs (like the ones I'm helping a client develop)?

Even though the number Technorati reports may not be increasing, I have noticed that the members of the "LinkedIn Bloggers" group I co-moderate, which is maintained on the Yahoo! Groups platform for members of LinekIn who are into blogging, continues to increase in membership.

Another thing I have noticed is that opportunities for social networking and creating content continue to proliferate, but there are still only 24 hours in a day.

Dennis McDonald
http://www.ddmcd.com

Do these numbers include the number of private or password-protected blogs? I know that a growing number of people -- especially families and military servicefolks -- are using private blogs extensively, and that sometimes the official numbers don't include them.

This was what I put down for my 2007 predictions so it's not too suprising to see. The hardest thing for bloggers after six months is continuing to blog. For a lot of people reading blogs is much more interesting the actually blogging and for another good portion of people, the marketing that is entering the blogosphere so heavily is making even reading blogs pointless.

I think this is an easy one to explain.

First, sites are now being created that are not purely blogs, but are multi-purpose sites in which blogs are a part. I wonder if MySpace blogs are counted in that list for example.

Second, what you're seeing here is the maximum number of people that are willing to create (and maintain) a blog given the current complexity in doing so. I would say that even Blogger is too hard for some people, and don't get me started on MoveableType and WordPress.

Until someone figures out how to make blog creation, personalization and maintenance turnkey for the mass market you're not going to see this number go up much above where it is today.

I think there is one major point left out of this report. While the numbers have flattened, there is no reason to believe it's the SAME 15 million people operating active blogs. In fact, there is significant reason to believe who is blogging changes frequently. And that's GOOD! As Web 2.0 leads to a more democratized journalistic landscape, the quantity and quality of the voices available throughout one's lifetime shifts radically. This will lead to a more informed, engaged and empowered citizenry. Let's say for instance there is a pond in your polluted neighborhood and you wanted it fixed. Start your blog, add quality news from established sources from a place like The NewsRoom (http://www.thenewsroom.com) to supplement your opinions, drive traffic there from government and media sources. When the pond is brought to the right people's attention and cleaned up - POOF! no reason to keep blogging. That's democracy in action.

Jeff Crigler
Voxant
http://www.news2020project.com

I agree with news2020project, and I'll add one further point... Not only would I suppose that the actual people blogging is rotating, but I would also suppose that slowly over time there is a natural quality evolution taking place. Maybe "quality" is a strong word, but here's what I mean... Over time, the "better" or "more interesting" or "more popular" or "I-have-a-shot-at-being-around-for-a-long-time" blogs stay, and the others go. So I would assume (and I'm making up the actual numbers - they're just representative) that in 2005 there were 4M interesting blogs, in 2006 there were 4.5M interesting blogs, in 2007 there will be 5.1M interesting blogs ... even though there are a constant 15M "active" blogs.