We lived and died by our blogs; now, not so much

As South by Southwest Interactive begins, we wonder what will be the future of the online diary

By Omar L. Gallaga
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Thursday, March 08, 2007

The last entry on Austinite Kirsten Nothstine's blog, "Cicada," is dated Sept. 24, 2006: "The cicadae have archery fever after taking a weekend course in late July. Olympic dreams abound."

The site, which started in 2002, is one of many Austin blogs that have shared personal insights through essay-style writing. Now, it's awfully quiet on the once-humming Cicada.

"I've started a lot of posts and then not finished them," says Nothstine, a graphic designer. Family activities — she and her husband have a 10-year-old son — take up a lot of her time.

Hers is not the only corner of the Web that's quieter these days. According to research firm Gartner Inc., more than 200 million abandoned blogs litter the Internet. Gartner also predicted that 2007 will be the year that blogging peaks. The December report sent the blogosphere (we salute you, oh ugly, ungainly word for global online community) into a cybertizzy: Is it the end of blogging? Was it all just a fad?

As the South by Southwest Interactive Festival opens today, blogging is in transition. The traditional blog, a journal detailing the minutiae of everyday life or linking to interesting articles with some commentary, might indeed be going out of vogue. But, as the needs of online writers, the tools available to them and the habits of readers change, the blog might be morphing into something new.

Web sites frozen in time

Just a few years ago, blogging seemed to promise a worldwide audience to anyone with a writerly bent and an Internet connection. Bloggers such as Heather Armstrong of the domestic Dooce.com and Markos Moulitsas Zúniga of political site Daily Kos proved you could make a living — and become online celebrities — at the keyboard. Suddenly politicians were showing they were with it (but mostly they weren't) by employing campaign trail blogs. Celebrities blogged. Your mom blogged (how embarrassing). It seemed to be the future of communications.

According to David Sifry of Technorati Inc., which provided some of the data for Gartner's prediction, 100,000 new blogs were created each day as of October 2006. But, Sifry wrote, the growth is slowing. Blogging exploded from 2003 to 2006, when, according to Technorati, fewer than 2 million blogs grew to more than 57 million in October. Now, the number of active worldwide bloggers is expected to peak at 100 million and eventually level off to about 30 million.

Why the change? Nothstine isn't the only blogger who got pressed for time. Jeremy Kraybill, who used to update an Austin poker blog called Love and Casino War (remember that poker craze?), stopped writing online in 2005. The software manager for Boundless Networks used to own the domain name pokerblog.com, which attracted about 5,000 visitors a week. But his interest in poker playing and blogging both dwindled after he got married.

"I spent a lot of spare time on it," Kraybill said. "(Since then) I've tried to focus on things that are more productive."

Kraybill thinks a lot of people don't know what they're in for when they start writing online. "They realize it's a lot of work," he said. "And you have to be consistent. Most people are bad about being consistent about anything."

One local blog, bellyfuzz.com, went from a group site of eight to 10 writers to a one-man online operation. Steve Basile, who runs the site now, recently posted an entry called "What I Believe" after a four-month posting break.

"Unless you write a daily blog that becomes well-read and is looked to as a source of information, it's very easy to feel very isolated and feel like nobody's interested," he said.

Chip Rosenthal, a local engineer who runs the portal site austinbloggers.org, says writing online is now so common that only the best and most distinctive content stands out. That can leave plenty of would-be Web stars withering without attention.

Mena Trott is a blogging pioneer who co-founded Six Apart, the creators of Moveable Type, Typepad and a new blogging site called Vox, says that another big problem with blogs has been that many of those who used to write primarily about their personal lives have been burned as the online world has become increasingly crowded and easy to search.

"Blogging can be really intense," says Austinite Cecilia Johnson, who stopped blogging at silvershoe.com soon after her father's death in 2003. "People in real life will end up reading it and that will affect relationships with people."

Bloggers who have revealed too much (flight attendants, techies with nondisclosure agreements, gossipers who slept with high-level politicians) have even been fired or sued.

Blogs grow up

Austinbloggers.org launched in 2003 as a project to collect in one place what online writers were saying and to give readers a view of the community.

While activity spikes during big local events happen (the deaths of Ann Richards and Molly Ivins or the controversy over the building of a northside Wal-Mart), there aren't as many updates as there once were on the site. Rosenthal admits to writing less on his own site, "It's Just This Little Chromium Switch Here."

"Blogging, at some point, will go away," Rosenthal said. "Blogging probably represents a key transition point to a very dynamic personal Web."

Say what? Don't worry — we'll explain.

Trott said that the definition of a blog is changing rapidly and that many people simply want a way to document their lives, not achieve online fame.

" 'Blog' is such a loaded word," Trott said in a phone interview from her office in San Francisco, "everyone has an idea of what they think it is. We want people to feel comfortable again with sharing things. We're trying to get people excited about the idea of being able to document your life."

Vox.com, which launched publicly last October, addresses privacy concerns by making it easier for bloggers to control who sees posts, Trott said.

An entry about music, for instance, might be available to the entire Internet, but photos of a baby or a personal diary could be restricted to Vox users that the blogger authorizes.

Trott says online tools are finally catching up with how people want to express themselves. Rosenthal has a similar view. He thinks the days of static Web pages, coded by hand and text-heavy, might be over. Most bloggers, he says, want to interact in a more personal way now, often with photos, video and audio. Many sites that offer social networking, photo albums or video uploading also including blogging as a component.

Businesses have also gotten into the act, fostering online communities where customers can comment or participate. Rosenthal says he admires the blogs run by the Alamo Drafthouse and Jo's Hot Coffee and Good Food.

"They've mastered the conversational nature of the blog," he says, "I feel like they're definitely talking to me rather than at me."

Many bloggers have moved on to social networking worlds such as MySpace.com, photo-sharing sites such asFlickr.com or the ubiquitous video mecca YouTube.com, which can give any attention-seeker dreams of Internet stardom.

Like an increasing number of sites that offer easier-to-use blogging tools, Vox closely integrates sites such asFlickr as well as audio and video, turning some laborious programming chores for bloggers into a few mouse clicks.

In 2004, Johnson started using Flickr.com to post photos, which she says has become a much more natural artistic outlet for her than blogging was. She now posts photos that she can contribute to community pools. She can discuss her images and is moving toward a career in photography.

On the Web, you're never alone

In this new wave in blogging, many participants are finding new ways to connect.

Rosenthal and his wife, Juliette Kernion (who met via an online journal writers' gathering) run an annual Web event called "Holidailies." It serves as a portal for writers who commit to writing blog entries every day from Dec. 1 to Jan. 1, usually themed to the holidays.

Rosenthal says the '06 Holidailies attracted the most participants yet, a sign perhaps that bloggers will post productively when they feel they're not alone.

"I think overall we're seeing a movement from blogging as a stand-alone activity," Rosenthal said. "By and large, I think people who are blogging within an online community kind of live in that community."

Indeed, Austin has a healthy array of music bloggers, food bloggers, fertility bloggers and, of course, bloggers who write about technology.

Like any community, the Austin blogging world has gained and lost members. At a recent Wednesday night meeting of local bloggers at Genuine Joe Coffeehouse, fewer than a dozen gathered writers talked about twitter.com, an increasingly popular site that tells people what you're doingat any given moment. One newcomer, a real estate blogger, expressed interest in getting an East Austin video project going with local contributors.

While some of the faces have changed, many of the big-picture discussions are the same as they were in the early days of the local blogging movement: How do we build community? How do we use these tools to change the world? What does the future hold?

In much the same way that the film community in Austin connects so many actors, directors, crew members, producers and artisans, the local blogging scene might be remaining so consistent because of an infrastructure that has continued to welcome new personalities and a locale that always offers plenty to blog about.

Basile, the bellyfuzz.com blogger and a semiretired techie is getting excited about the MySpace page for B.D. Riley's Irish Pub, the Sixth Street bar he owns. Basile says he went from high-tech to high-tap and has found his passion.

"It occurred to me as I spend a lot of time around people in various stages of intoxication . . . the observations of everyday life in a pub might make for an interesting blog."

And just like that, another Austin blog is born.

ogallaga@statesman.com; 445-3672