When Should a Blog End?
I don't get to quote Aristotle (link selected for passage relevent to todays blogosphere) on a blog very often, but he said: "All things must have a beginning, a middle and an end." So it must be with individual blogs. Dave Winer stepped into one of his periodic ruckuses with his recent announcement that he will be taking a year off.
Maybe he won't come back at all. Maybe he will. With all the chihuahuas nipping at his buttocks, I would understand why he didn't. It really is no big thing either way. There will be a time when Doc, Scoble, Rubel, even Israel will all step out. We will burn out, get old, move on to other things. It is no matter.
The void our departures will create will be filled in a microsecond. I'm already prepared for the morning, I'll wake up and discover that Shel Israel and Naked Conversations have become so yesterday. It will be a wise moment to quit and either reinvent myself yet again, or decide to grow roses and walk with grandchildren along the beach more often.
When Robert and I wrote Naked Cnversations, one question I now realize we overlooked is: "When should a blog be ended?"
When we were talking to L'Oreal executives in France, we learned that the Vichi Blog, one of my favorite case studies, had trickled to a close and some former fans were irate because Vichi had not announced that it was terminating.
Winer got torched for announcing he would quit. Vichi experienced the same fate for NOT announcing it.
Yesterday, I learned under NDA that two more blogs covered in our book will soon terminate. At first this felt like a worisome trend. For a short moment I worried that the book was already becoming obsolete.
Then I recalleded that in preparation for writing Naked, I reread Tom Peters', "In Search of Excellence." I determined he was the right guy to write the forward for our book--even though nearly every case study he used in his book was now obsolete. Blogs end. The good ones make useful points that others can use and expand upon before they do.
Companies, blogs, marketing programs, like human lives come and go. It's the natural order of things. The only problem wth it is that many people yearn for accurate analytics, and so far, the abandonment numbers are nearly impossible to determine.
I used to follow Ray Ozzie's blog when he headed up Groove Networks. I loved the blog, but must have unsibscribed at least three times, because he went dark so long between some postings that I assumed it was abandoned.
Some people change hosts and their old blogs appear abandoned when they really are not. Vichy's blog supported a product launch and ran it's natural course. Dave is quitting for whatever reason he chooses. When I accomplish in the blogosphere just a fraction of what he has, perhaps I'll quit too.
Posted by shel israel on March 23, 2006 Permalink
TrackBack URL for this entry:http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/4515911
Maybe he won't come back at all. Maybe he will. With all the chihuahuas nipping at his buttocks, I would understand why he didn't. It really is no big thing either way. There will be a time when Doc, Scoble, Rubel, even Israel will all step out. We will burn out, get old, move on to other things. It is no matter.
The void our departures will create will be filled in a microsecond. I'm already prepared for the morning, I'll wake up and discover that Shel Israel and Naked Conversations have become so yesterday. It will be a wise moment to quit and either reinvent myself yet again, or decide to grow roses and walk with grandchildren along the beach more often.
When Robert and I wrote Naked Cnversations, one question I now realize we overlooked is: "When should a blog be ended?"
When we were talking to L'Oreal executives in France, we learned that the Vichi Blog, one of my favorite case studies, had trickled to a close and some former fans were irate because Vichi had not announced that it was terminating.
Winer got torched for announcing he would quit. Vichi experienced the same fate for NOT announcing it.
Yesterday, I learned under NDA that two more blogs covered in our book will soon terminate. At first this felt like a worisome trend. For a short moment I worried that the book was already becoming obsolete.
Then I recalleded that in preparation for writing Naked, I reread Tom Peters', "In Search of Excellence." I determined he was the right guy to write the forward for our book--even though nearly every case study he used in his book was now obsolete. Blogs end. The good ones make useful points that others can use and expand upon before they do.
Companies, blogs, marketing programs, like human lives come and go. It's the natural order of things. The only problem wth it is that many people yearn for accurate analytics, and so far, the abandonment numbers are nearly impossible to determine.
I used to follow Ray Ozzie's blog when he headed up Groove Networks. I loved the blog, but must have unsibscribed at least three times, because he went dark so long between some postings that I assumed it was abandoned.
Some people change hosts and their old blogs appear abandoned when they really are not. Vichy's blog supported a product launch and ran it's natural course. Dave is quitting for whatever reason he chooses. When I accomplish in the blogosphere just a fraction of what he has, perhaps I'll quit too.
Posted by shel israel on March 23, 2006 Permalink
TrackBack URL for this entry:http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/4515911
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