David Sifry is examining the state of the world of blogs again, through his Technorati tracking. In the first of a few articles he looks at the creation rate of blogs, the numbers of which seems to be growing exponentially and doubling every 5 months. The key figure for me (as for him) is the seemingly consistent 55% activity rate, that is 55% of blogs created are active.

I’d like to see a breakdown of that 45% drop off, which services providers have the greater numbers? I would not be surprised to see that there were higher abandonments in the ready-to-wear variety of blogs, the sign up and you’re there Bloger, Livejournal, MSN Spaces etc. Low cost of entry means less investment, so less incentive to stay. The same factors that are encouraging the growth also mean that people don’t stick to it. Looking at the results of the MIT blog survey, 20% of respondents said that the blog was created a a journal of their life. A personal diary. So like any personal diaries some will fall by the wayside, to be embarassingly discovered in a future moment.