The Land Of Forgotten Blogs

Thousands of blogs are started each year and then, after time, abandoned, left to sit, somwhere in a vast net cemetery

Lindsay Lohan is better known for her wild partying lifestyle rather than her films, yet so many visitors would regularly flock to her web log. On 15 October 2003, she posted her last (as she was about to set off for a week filming in Toronto), cherry piece giving away no indication that she was about to ditch the diary. Fans have been left on hooks ever since. Sadly, another blog hits the dust... The entry ended: "I just wanted to check in, I'll try and write more ... xx LL." There is thought to be around 200 million blogs floating around in cyberspace which have been abandoned for a whole host of reasons and Lohan's is certainly no exception. The sad end of the revolutionary blog may be coming to an end as it's first flush of free expression is getting caught up in the giant net of projects started then washed up on the beach of cyberland. The job has been a tough one - we know that every man, woman and child starts the personal and insightful internet diary in complete good faith. We have all done it from big Hollywood stars to cleaners and parking attendants, everyone wants to voice their lives, but if we don't think anyone is listening then we stop after a while, walking away from the screen, never to return. Yet Google and others still faithfully add these blogs into their search engines, unaware that the content is passed updating. They continue to pots links to blogs that now bare the weight of net cobwebs. So to the millions of web users, we give these wandering lost souls a category of 'ghost blogs,' after all, nothing has a purpose until it has a name... So do you really think the age of the enthusiastic blog is coming to an abrupt end as we wade through the swamp of lost blogs once standing proudly in a blue sea of cultism? Some have called it "the suicide of your virtual self" and I think I agree - we are not allowed to settle in one place on the web - we have to keep moving. What is fab now will be out sweeping the streets tomorrow. The peak, they say was last October when a staggering 100,000 blogs were being created each day, that number has since started to fall. Some say it will keep at around 100 million but others fear that the number will fall to 30 million - a considerable drop in the world they call the web. "A lot of people have been in and out of (blogging)," said Daryl Plummer of the Gartner Reaserch company. "Everyone thinks they have something to say until they're put on stage and asked to say it." For the rich and famous, they can be found to be even worse at entries than the rest of us. On Streisand's official website, a front page link reads: "Click here to read Barbra's blog." The link leads to a blank page. Research suggests that YouTube is to blame. Because of new and exciting new ways to communicate, the blog is coming quickly out dated and will only keep going simply by people who have become accustomed to it and it's personal attraction. We do run out of things to say and so keeping a blog going on a daily basis is hard work. Most of us have a go, I try to at least with mine because it's like chatting to an old friend. If we thought more of our little spaces of cyberland, we would not abandon our friends, after all, who wants to video themselves in PJ's and fluffy slippers - at least you don't have to look good to blog...