Hot topic of the day I found on two blogs I read.  Nick Carr talked about unread bloggers, and Sterling objected to the metaphor Nick made about peasants.  I also read this comment here (which I found quite silly). Got me thinking a bit about why I blog, so I thought I’d take a moment and pontificate.

First - my thought on why most people blog today.  Ego.  People are blogging to get themselves heard.  They want readers, and I think most crave readers.  In reality, most people out there tend to feel a bit lonelier than they want to (myself included), and I have a hunch blogging is a way to try to gain a little warmth in the cold darkness of Earth 2.0 (just like the first one, but with more Ajax).

Next - my thought on the quality of most blogs today. Crappy.  98% or more are poorly written rants or lovefests.  Unreadable dreck.  Bad grammar abounds (and then excuses about how we should ignore grammar).  Well, I can’t.  I can’t ignore it, and I can’t ignore empty rants on how the lines at McDonald’s should be shorter, or Apple should give away iPods to homeless people.  I just don’t care.  And by the way, I don’t profess to be any better than anyone else at this.

The question - so why do I blog? It’s fun.  Seriously.  I love writing.  Maybe I can’t hack it professionally, but I don’t care.  Furthermore, I can’t stand the hype train (about anything by the way, not just Web 2.0).  I chose 2.0 as my topic because I felt it was the one thing I could blog about that nobody else was at present.  Or at least not with the tone I felt was worth taking. 

So - Do I care about readership numbers?  I enjoy them, but don’t focus on them.  I like the compliments I receive (and don’t mind the flames either), and I like to hear that others like what I write.  I enjoy the fact that I appear to be causing intelligent discussion on the topic.  That is truly meaningful to me. 

To summarize: I’m an egotistical bastard who, like everyone else, writes a crappy blog but usually finds it fun to do and enjoys the occasional link from the outside world.

But that’s me.

Yes folks, it’s true.  A couple of days ago the CEO of Technorati posted on his blog that over 50 million blogs exist (Technorati new slogan: one site to rate them all, one site to find them, one site to track them all, and in the darkness bind them), and its growing rapidly.  Sifry states “Frankly, I can’t possibly imagine it continuing to grow at this pace - after all, there are only so many human beings in the world! It has to slow down.”  He’s wrong, people. Dead wrong. 

Here’s my blog growth chart, which clearly proves it:

(if the above image is cropped, click here to see the whole thing)

For you “math hounds” who want “statistics” to “prove” the curve, it’s really simple.  In fact, these estimates may be conservative.  Over the next 6 months, the “blogosphere” will grow at a mere 11% per month (well below) it’s pace this year.  However, by next March, in an effort to remain competitive, the US and UK will put out a blogging mandate, and we’ll see a 50% bump by end of April.  India will soon follow, and the number of blogs will double on a monthly basis through June.  Then China comes fully online in a pre-Olympic rush, and we’ll see a tripling of blogs.  And on August 13th, 2007, the blogosphere will declare war on the physical world (sponsored by Second Life), and most of the Earth will be overcome by grey goo.

Now not everyone believes Sifry’s numbers, and Om Malik even went so far as to do some research on the matter (btw, Om, who’s Dave Fifry?), but I think we all know there is just no way to keep up with the blogosphere… Dead or not.

The interesting part, as I see it is the upcoming “blogospace war.”  While 100 million users on Myspace (as of this week) seems impressive, I agree with Nate’s comment: WTF?  I mean, Pete Cashmore observed 170,000 new users in less than a day, but that’s just getting warmed up.  A fight is a-brewin’  (off-topic, am I the only one who saw Nick’s comment that Google doesn’t plan ‘to cover MySpace with ads’ and thought, “thank goodness, cuz nobody wants an ugly MySpace page”?)

And then AOL will buy whomever’s left standing, because what the heck else are they going to do, more chat?

A quick history:

• The site launched privately in alpha for a select few readers, namely myself and a friend of mine. 
• Upon receiving an LOL in an IM conversation, I decided to go into public beta, and thankfully, there were no bugs reported.
• A few weeks later, I added a Tag Cloud, so I knew it was time to get WELL past beta.  I mean, once you are in tag cloud nirvana (does anyone ever click on the tag cloud instead of the categories???), you just know you are playing with the big boys.  Accordingly, an unprecedented double-beta happened.
• While in double-beta a lot of experimentation happened.  I added and removed an OPML list and even a completely unnecessary email-based subscription system thanks to Squeet (I removed it several days later due to complete redundancy since the world already has bloglines and feedburner).  Wow.  It was pretty crazy for a while there.  In mere hours the site had clearly evolved into gamma, then delta.  INSANE!

Now, I am pleased to announce Dead 2.0: Epsilon Edition.  Now with fresh new logo.  Wondering how it came to be, you are?  Well Sterling made this comment to ask these guys to make a free logo. I thought free? I’m IN.  A day or so later I received an email from Ali Sabet, the President of Sabet Brands, Inc.  He made me a logo!  Freaking sweet!

We did have a little back and forth dialog, as I liked his idea of a skull in the logo.  We ended up with the skullbulb you see below.  Thanks, Ali! Ali runs www.mojizu.com, which I shall dissect in the next few days, and naturally he blogs about mojizu here.

Incidentally, this post is inspired by all the folks who like to blog about their Web 2.0 ventures.  Thanks, Kris, Song, Auren, 37people, the jaxsters, cocofolks, Richard, and EtherScott.