The Place of Dead Blogs

Wandering around, I see a lot of blogs that haven't been updated in some time.

When is a blog "dead?" Is there some standard, somehow loosely agreed-upon by the Internet community at large, that defines a dead blog?

I confess I don't know. But that won't stop Me from making a pronouncement: A blog is officially dead when it hasn't been posted to in two months.

I really wanted to say "three weeks." To Me, one of the most important things about a blog is continuity. The most valuable personal blogs give the reader some sense, at least, of the rhythm of the author's life. His or Her experiences and thoughts thus can be read in the context of what is happening to and around the author. I personally would rather read a series of short, not necessarily earth-shaking little entries that are posted almost every day as opposed to two weeks of nothing followed by a 10-inch tome folowed by another two weeks of silence.

But, ok, allowances have to be made. For most people, blogging can't be the primary focus of life. Life happens. Computers die, people get sick, etc. So two months it is. After that the blog is question is dead. You heard it here.

And of course that leads to all sorts of fascinating and blind (made more fascinating, perhaps by the very blind nature of it?) speculation. What happened? Did the blogger lose interest? Die? Go through some cathartic life change? Sell everything and move to a tiny island in the Pacific?

Wandering through the place of dead blogs . . . I am filled with a sense of wonder, and, strangely enough, sadness. Bouncing from one dead blog to another blog, that turns out to be dead, too, is sort of like walking through a maternity ward and tripping over gravestones.