So recently my blog was listed on a website called DC Blogs. Although, I didn’t really want to be added to the list, I don’t mind that much. After looking over the website for a bit, I noticed something a bit odd about all the blogs that were listed…. they all seemed to from Google’s website Blogspot. I didn’t realize how popular that website was until I began looking at the DC Blogs website. Of course, the scientist in me asked, “well how many blogs are listed there?” and of course, I decided to find out…

As of today, there are currently 631 blogs listed and of those, 413 are Blogspot blogs! That is a whopping 65% of all the blogs.

I also found that there were 22 Typepad blogs, 18 Livejournals, 4 AOL Journals, 3 Smorgasblogs, and the rest, a meager 171 blogs (27%) are your normal word press & moveable type dot com/net blogs.

Don’t worry, I didn’t actually spend the time reading all the code, I did a replace function in Dreamweaver to do the counting for me :-)

What I did infer from this finding is that the “blogging phenomenon*” has been advanced by people who don’t know much about web design or coding. Blogspot and the other generic blogging websites do not require the user know anything beyond how to use a keyboard, mouse, and web browser. This has also cut down on the startup funds and knowledge needed to make a blog.

The Blogspot accounts are free, and therein lies the biggest issue I have with these: fiscal motivation. I looked over a few of them and they are dead blogs! The lemming who decided it would be cool to blog discovered that no one read their blog and they haven’t touched it in ages. Since they are free, the person doesn’t have anything vested in their blog aside from the aspiration of popularity their blog might bring them.

On the other hand, I pay about $100 a year to have my blog and all that is attached to it- a gig of space and a lot of monthly bandwidth. I guess you could say I have a website and on that website I have a blog. I have more content than a Blogspot blog can handle or is designed to.

Fiscally jealous? Hardly. I guess it’s that rugged individual in me that says, “why let someone do something for you when you can do it better yourself?” After noticing all the different, but limited in number, templates available on Blogspot, I’m even more proud of the time and energy I’ve put into my website.

Granted my website still has a couple bugs in it, but I’d take it any day over some carbon copy of a blog. I guess if I were to be using Blogspot, the only thing I’d have going for me is my writing… what else is going to differentiate blog a & blog b if they both have the same template? Opinions, words, and not too much else. Oh yeah, I don’t write much….I’m too busy :)

*it’s not really a phenomenon, it’s people wasting time in front of their computers instead of doing something….