I just went through my RSS reader which I admit that I rarely use and noticed that many good blogs which I used to read are now defunct. Through my tenure as a blogger, I have also noticed that readers have come and gone. Perhaps the blogosphere is indeed like an eco-system where blogs live and die as bloggers run out of things to say and blog readers enter and feed of the blogs until they have learned all they can and leave again.

This leaves long time bloggers, who resort to repeating themselves. I used to think that that was a bad thing, but perhaps it is justified due to the systemic problem that new readers are reluctant to go back and read old posts. This is a presumption – in fact I get quite a few mails from people that say they just discovered Early Retirement Extreme and that they are now going through the archives from day 1.

If, however, this presumption is true it may make sense to start retelling old stories in new ways. After all, the blog would then fulfill a kind of service as a cultural carrier rather than a library similar to how bridal magazines are published semiannually for new brides to be despite there not being anything in those magazines that aren’t found in books or older magazines. The main difference is only that they are readily available, like blogs.

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Originally posted 2008-07-09 06:53:12.