The more I think about it, the more I believe the whole video blogging movement is a step back and to the nerdy.

You can’t easily pause in the middle of video blog posts, move along and return later to finish reading them.  You can’t search for content within them.  They don’t archive well.

You have to watch a ton of boring stuff you don’t care about just to find the part that interests you.  It’s like searching through reams of microfilm to find that one relevant newspaper article you think you remember reading years ago.

There is a low barrier for entry, so you get a whole lot of chaff with the wheat.  Many video blog posts are like home movies eagerly sprung on unsuspecting visitors- they bring geometrically more joy to the people in them than to the people watching them.

They take more time when the idea should be to convey information in less time.  It’s not just that people can read faster than other people can talk, though that’s part of it.  It’s the fact that there are a lot of other sources for interesting and efficient multimedia content.  And thanks to PVRs, most TV shows come with a fast forward button.

They dilute the momentum of the blogging movement, which is already waning thanks to conscription by profiteers and social networks.

And they make bloggers appear even more nerdy to the rest of the world.  That’s a tall order, but there you go.

Would I wipe all homemade video content from blogs?  Absolutely not.  Videos as a primary medium have their place, and that place is YouTube.  Where they can then be served up as accretive blog content.

Even the occasional video post used to spice up a traditional blog can provide value and entertainment.  Several of my pals do that.

Occasional video content is one thing.  Home movies as a substitute for journalism is something else altogether.

My hunch is that video blogging will experience the same life cycle as many prior hype du jours.  Few to many to few.  Novelty to hype to irrelevance.

I hope so.

Chip Camden and TDavid have written interesting posts in response to Jeff Atwood’s 13 Blog Cliches.  I tend to do a lot of the stuff on Jeff’s list too.

Here’s my brief take on the 13…

Before I resigned myself to life without parole in Blogger prison, I used to want a calendar widget bad.  Looking back, I think that was because I saw it as a trapping of WordPress freedom.  I’m over that now.  I don’t want a calendar widget or any of the thousand or so other things I could do if I could get my freakin’ blog moved to WordPress without losing all my permalinks.  No flair for me.  Nosiree.

Random images….  Just like Doors’ lyrics and snowflakes and Dave Winer’s recurring blogospats, how do we know they’re really random?  Maybe we just can’t decipher the pattern or metaphor or whatever.  I bet lots of them are less random than they appear at first glance.  Sort of like Thomas Hawk’s photo names.

Big blog rolls on your blog are B-A-D, but only if Newsome.Org isn’t in it.  I really like big honking blog rolls when my blog is in the list.  I keep my big, fat blog roll on my portal page.  If I ever get through my Swivel Feeds experiment, my blog roll is going on a crash diet.  The cats are wearing on me.

I use a Technorati tag cloud thing here, but I have a feeling it won’t be here long term.  I suppose when Google buys the remains of Technorati one day, it will become a Google tag cloud.  Shortly afterwards, I’ll get all paranoid that it’s spying on me and take it down.

Ads.  Those mystical things that make the internet go ’round.  I had an AdSense account for about a month.  I made somewhere in the neighborhood of a quarter.  No more ads for me.  Mike thinks I could make more if I did it thoughtfully.  Maybe, but then I’d have to stop complaining about ads, and where’s the fun in that?  To put it mildly, I am not a believer in advertising’s long term ability to support the internet hysteria.

Number 8 is just wrong.  I’d rather read about someone’s day than yet another post raving about the latest social network or Facebook application.  Nobody’s life is as boring as that.  Like TDavid, I tend to choose interesting voices over interesting subject matter.  The two best posts of the year so far are this one by Will Truman (I’m down to thinking about it weekly now; it was daily for a good while) and Paul Lester‘s Freebird post.  Those posts are all about the writer.

Sorry I haven’t been posting much (see number 9).  TDavid is right that I lose momentum when I go on hiatus, but I can’t help it.  Sometimes I get caught up in the very bearable lightness of not blogging.

Blogging about blogging is actually a contrarian approach during these social network-crazed days.

When in the Course of online events it becomes necessary for alienated and isolated bloggers to dissolve the existing blogging hierarchy and exclusionary behavior which have disconnected them from the A-List and made them feel even more nerdy, and to assume among the multitude of powers they wish they had, the equally unattainable station to which the Laws of It Ain’t Fair entitle them, a decent respect for The Onion and Al Gore requires that they should write yet another post no one will ever read to declare the many real and imagined causes which impel them to the third party affected and now ironically embraced separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evidently pie in the sky, that all bloggers are created equal, that they are endowed by their Computers and iPhones with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are lots and lots of Links, Thoughtful Comments and the pursuit of AdSense Dollars. – That to secure these rights, lots of Wailing and Moaning is inserted into Blogs, deriving their literary powers from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical video-blogged nerdathon, – That whenever any Ze Frank or Ze Frank equivalent becomes destructive of these ends by monopolizing all the viewers who would otherwise be watching videos of Star Trek impersonations, it is the Right of the Bloggers to use their webcams, lightsabers and YouTube to alter or to abolish it, and to achieve new levels of self humiliation, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their rapidly diminishing Technorati Ranking and Google Juice. Technorati, indeed, will dictate that the Blogosphere long established months ago should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that new bloggers are better suited to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to deny the A-Listers the celebrity to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the Mythical Endless Ad Dollar and a link from Om evinces a design to reduce them to absolute Isolation and Silence, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw another Blogofit, and to demand a new relational structure for their future security. -Such has been the patient sufferance of many Bloggers; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to start posting cat pictures with misspelled and allegedly funny cat quotes. The history of the present Gatekeepers is a history of repeated exclusions and the turning of deaf, furry ears, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over the Blogosphere. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a sleepy world.

They have refused to respond to conversational overtures, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

They have ignored posts of immediate and pressing importance, unless emailed till their Attention should be obtained; and when so emailed, they have utterly neglected to reply.

They have called together ludicrously entitled conferences and unconferences at places unusual and uncomfortable, for the sole purpose of fatiguing us into believing that they were right not to invite us.

They have refused for a long time, to cause others to be admitted to Techmeme, whereby the Aggregating Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the Bloggers at large for their exercise; the Blogosphere remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from cat blogs within, and convulsions of laughter from little old ladies without.

They have made all of Web 2.0 dependent on Advertising alone for the tenure of its offices, and the amount and payment of its salaries.

They have combined with others in formal and informal affiliations to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our desires to be popular, and unacknowledged by our moms.

They have plundered our right to bigger feed counts, ravaged our prospective link counts, burnt out our minds, and denied us links from lots of other people.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Posted for Redress in the most irritable terms: Our repeated Posts have been answered only by repeated silence. An A-Lister, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a meanie, is unfit to be the ruler of a utopian and unrealistic blogosphere.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Old Media brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their laid off and soon to be reporters to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here at the end of the long tail. We have appealed to their journalistic standards and arrogance, and we have conjured them by the hair of our chinny chin chins to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our reader counts and inbound links. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the so-called New Media, Enemies when they ignore us, in Linkage Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the New Blogosphere, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Scoble of the internet for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the solitary bloggers, solemnly publish and declare, That these disjointed Blogs are, and of Right ought to be Free and Incoherent Blogs, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the old Blogosphere, and that all  connection between them and the old Blogosphere, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Incoherent Blogs, they have full Power to converse with each other, conclude open and free blogging Alliances, establish Cross-Blog Conversations, and to do all other nerdly Acts and other geeky Things which Independent Blogs may of right do. – And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of our day jobs, we mutually pledge to each other our Blogs, our Links and our sacred Attention.

Between my earlier ScobleFeeds series and my current swivel feeds experiment, I have read a lot of blogs.  During this time, I have been looking for patterns and commonalities.  While it’s hard to draw too many universal conclusions about the blogging experience without front-end data, there are a few patterns that emerge.

One of them is what I think of as the 5 Stages of Blogging.  The stages of a blog’s life from the hopeful day of creation to the sad and sometimes seemingly inevitable day of abandonment.  It may not seem that way in the often competitive blogosphere, but the loss of every legitimate blog is a loss shared by all legitimate bloggers.

Which is a good reason to study the patterns and search for a way to reroute the process towards a better end.

All bloggers don’t experience all 5 stages.  The low financial and technical barrier to entry results in many hastily created blogs that end up abandoned during one of the early stages due to boredom or the lack of a genuine interest in blogging.  Some bloggers aren’t concerned with growing an audience and never reach the frustration stage when their blog’s growth rate stalls or reverses.  And once in a very great while a new blogger actually gets accepted into the warm, chummy place I talked about last night, and happily avoids the pain of the later stages (more often than not, there is an ancillary relationship that triggers this acceptance, but it does happen).  But the pattern is pretty clear, particularly in cases where new bloggers joins the fray in search of conversation, inclusion and readers.  It’s less clear in cases where the blogger is primarily concerned with making money or selling a product.  The psychological investment in blogging is less in those cases, and if the money isn’t made or the product isn’t selling, the blogger often just moves along to the next marketing angle.

If you believe, as I do, that the blogosphere ought to be about conversation and sharing information, as opposed to merely a new manner of media distribution and/or prospecting for gold, then you should be concerned about the high attrition rate in the blogosphere.  If you want to have conversation, then there must be others to converse with.  Encouraging new bloggers and promoting blogging as a means of communication is in the best interest of all legitimate bloggers, from the top of the A-List to the very bottom of blogger’s hill.

People tend to forget this very important fact: without the long tail, there is no short tail.

So why is there so much blog attrition?

Here are my 5 stages of blogging, from creation to abandonment.

Stage 1: Excitement

This is the early stage of a blog, during which a platform is selected and a template evolves, widgets and other ancillary content are added, and the initial blog posts are written.  Like the band who has been gigging for years before making a record, new bloggers – at least the ones who have done a little planning – generally have an albums’ worth of really good topics to toss out.  Those initial posts generate a little reaction, particularly if the blogger does his homework, identifies the established bloggers who are amenable to new voices and cultivates them.

Excitement is high during this stage and expectations are intact and rising.

Step 2: Expectation

After the blog is launched and the blogger has learned his way around the blogosphere, it’s time to start building traffic and readers.  There are three related ways to measure this growth: blog visitors, subscriber numbers and links.  During this stage, a little traffic goes a long way.  I still remember how excited I was when I had 100 inbound links (not from 100 different blogs; I’m talking 100 total).  I called my wife into my study to show her the first time my blog was on Techmeme (then known as Tech Memeorandum).  It takes work to pass those initial milestones, but they generally come within a reasonable period or time.  At this point, the new blogger is certain that before long he and all those guys and gals he reads about will soon be yukking it up in cross-blog conversations like old college buddies.  But like college, this stage doesn’t last forever.

One of two things will happen.  Once in a blue moon, the blogger will catch lightning in a bottle, get swept up by the blogging elite, and become a recognized name in the blogosphere.  Much more often, the blogger will hit a plateau and the growth of his still new blog will slow or flatline.  He’s not the new guy any longer, his album’s worth of posts are getting a little stale, and the lizard-like blogosphere has been distracted by all the other flies buzzing around.

At this point the once hopeful blogger finds himself writing away to what seems like a diminishing rate of return.

Stage 3: Frustration

Once the honeymoon is over, the blogging work that seemed so new and interesting at first starts to feel hard and frustrating.  And very, very inefficient.  The blogger can’t figure out how to generate enough traction to achieve the organic growth that is an absolute requirement to maintain a popular blog.  He writes thoughtful posts on hot topics, links like crazy to other bloggers and waits. And waits.  He gets a few links here and there, but the small return on the huge effort is profoundly discouraging.  The blogging elite doesn’t notice him and many of the other new bloggers are too busy fighting for attention to engage in any meaningful conversation.  The blogging happiness trend is going down pretty quickly, but not in a straight line.  Small victories occasionally conceal the larger defeat and the blogger bounces between the rock of discouragement and the hard to maintain place of synthetic optimism.

At this point, the blogger begins looking for a new angle to kick-start and accelerate the growth process.  Perhaps he crafts alliances with other similarly situated bloggers, which, like any attempt to change the status quo, only works as long as it has critical mass.  Inevitably, some will become convinced that they can muscle their way into the club and take advantage of the very forces that once kept them down.  It’s the same dynamic as the driver who slows down to rubberneck at a traffic accident, telling himself that he’s already paid his dues by waiting in the long line of cars.

For the new blogger, the collapse of his wagon train is just one more setback in a journey that grows more frustrating with every step.

It is during this stage that pandering, agitating and extreme positions in search of a reaction begin to occur.  Like the preschooler who acts out for attention, however, this approach is not sustainable over the long term.  Angry or effusive posts create a self-fulfilling prophesy, whereby the blog’s growth is even more negatively affected as a result of posts, cynical or sycophantic, inspired by the blog’s lack of growth.

This is probably the least happy time for most bloggers.  The former excitement is replaced by frustration and the growing belief that time spent blogging might better be applied elsewhere.  Many bloggers abandon ship at this stage.  Other trudge along wearily to the next stage.

Stage 4 Alienation

After the blogger’s capacity for frustration is exceeded, he does an about face and, instead of seeking inclusion in the conversations, he rejects the entire process completely.  At this point, the tailspin towards abandonment has begun.  The blogger’s mental image of the blogosphere as unicorns and butterflies in a field of wildflowers is replaced with an equally distorted image of a dark and wicked place, full of conspiracies and evil doers.  The benefit of the doubt is cast aside in favor of broad condemnation.

This alienation manifests itself in one or more ways.  Perhaps it takes the form of cynical posts about the unfairness of the system.  Or long periods without posting anything, followed by a week or so of active posting.  Rote behavior, in an effort to find the hidden key that will unlock the gate.

Some blogs exist in a near perpetual state of alienation.  Eventually, the alienation gives way to abandonment.

Stage 5: Abandonment

Next comes the unsatisfying end game for the discouraged blogger.  His once cherished blog is either cast into the abyss via the delete button or, more often, left to lie silent by the side of the road like a burned out jalopy.  A testament to the inefficiency of the process.

I am amazed at the number of abandoned or nearly abandoned blogs I come across.  All the information in all the posts that were never published lost- not just for now, but for all time.  The development of the collective consciousness interrupted.  Once here, twice there.  Before long the entire process is in jeopardy.

I don’t have an easy solution to reduce the rate of blog attrition.  I do what I can by trying to find and highlight blogs from the blogosphere’s mostly invisible middle earth.  I don’t know if that will make a difference or not.  I hope so, but I am not immune to discouragement.

What I do know is that all legitimate bloggers, regardless of our motivation for blogging, have a vested interest in nurturing the blogosphere and encouraging the creation and continued existence of legitimate blogs by people we don’t know yet who have a lot to say, a lot to share, and a lot to teach us.

Everybody’s talking about Techmeme today…again.  Scoble says he has all the inbound links and ought to be the top story about whatever the top story is at the moment.  He’s said basically the same thing before.  Here’s the problem with that: Scoble could write a post about arm farting and 30 or 40 people would immediately link to it, hoping he might link back.  Scoble has more yes men than Michael Corleone and Michael Arrington combined.

In other words, all those people linking wildly to Scoble aren’t doing so because they think he is the world’s greatest authority on arm farting.  They are simply holding out their hands eagerly and hoping Scoble will shake it (via a link) as he walks by.  Getting a link from Scoble is almost as good as getting arrested with Paris Hilton.  It’s not Scoble’s fault he’s the king of the blogosphere any more than it’s Paris Hilton’s fault she’s in jail.

All of which means that, at least at the top of the blogosphere, links are less about authority and more about popularity and power.  Power to control admission to the in-crowd.  Just like in life, some go radical and reject the system that excluded them.  Others waive expectantly, hoping they’ll get called over to play.  Most are somewhere in between.

But none of this is a sound basis for deciding what is top news and what isn’t.  There needs to be more to it.  There needs to be a balance between popularity, authority, freshness and inclusion.  Most of the target audience for Techmeme already subscribe to Scoble’s blog.  They are at Techmeme looking to see what others are saying about various topics.  And let’s not kid ourselves, a ton of Techmeme readers are bloggers who want to be included in the conversation.  To remove the opportunity for inclusion would change Techmeme in a fundamental and adverse way.      

I have no idea how Techmeme works under the hood, but it seems to do a good job of picking out appropriate stories and discussion links.  Sure, I get the point that the Register and the New York Times are not blogs.  But be that as it may, I find Techmeme to be a lot less biased than most bloggers, A-List and otherwise, when it comes to picking up interesting and relevant links.

Meanwhile, Louis Gray has a case of the new blogger’s blues: “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten to a story before ‘the big guys’ get it, only to be ignored.”  We’ve all been there brother, but stay the course and you’ll get some exposure via Techmeme.  No, you won’t get to be the main topic link very much, because A-Listers and a lot of wannabes will always link “upstream” in an effort to protect or obtain a membership card.  But you’ll get in the discussion links (where I live).  Is it perfect?  No.  Is it more productive than waiting for a link from one of the A-Listers or wannabes?  Absolutely.

The blogosphere is not a level playing field and there are as many motivations for blogging as there are bloggers.  This makes the trip up blogger’s hill a steep one, but Techmeme has always struck me as a reasonably fair and informative place to start.