Your Thoughts: Ghost Blogs
Pull out a chair and sit down with your cup of coffee. It’s time to have a little talk. Today’s discussion: ghost blogs.
That phrase has been on a post-it note on my desk for a few months. I don’t even know why. I’m talking about those strange spaces on the Internet that haven’t been closed; they remain up, abandoned, their owners disappearing into the ether. There is no final post at the top announcing the cessation of the project. On the contrary, the most recent post (which is sometimes years old) usually gives no sense that the blog is coming to an end. It’s like walking into a house and finding the table fully set with a warm meal but devoid of people.
Last spring, Times Online had an article about the decline of blogging, which always makes me think of that Twain quote, “reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.” Their doomsday predictions aside, the part about people abandoning their blogs was interesting:
Some internet analysts call them “ghost blogs,” lingering reminders of a cultish enthusiasm for self-expression that is rapidly wearing off. Others liken the abandonment of blogs to “the suicide of your virtual self.”
I was drawn to that idea of “suicide of your virtual self,” which sounds fairly extreme. Does walking away from blogs or social media sites really have anything in common with ending your life?
I’m never sure what to do with these blogs on either the ALI blogroll or in my personal blog reader. I usually leave them up on the blogroll because I figure the archives could still be helpful to someone seeking information. I also usually leave them in my Google Reader because there have been a handful of times that the person has — years later — popped back on with a new post (and, let’s face it, I’m too lazy to prune my Reader).
What do you think about ghost blogs and that Times Online quote? What do you do with them in terms of your blogroll or blog reader?
46 comments
I am guilty of having a couple of ghost blogs. For me, at the moment those parts of my life are relatively dormant, though hopefully not gone for ever. I have found that at the moment my focus has been fixed, perhaps too hard, on my infertility. This has been to the detriment of other interests. I do intend to go back, eventually. Perhaps this discussion will send me back sooner than expected.
I think people just get bored and move on. Blogging’s not that serious. Or well, some people take it very seriously, but to others, its something they needed to do to get through a certain time of their lives, or they view it a bit like any other hobby that they might get bored with. I mean, I kept a diary in high school and got bored when I moved to Uni – just because I stopped keeping it didn’t mean my life was over (far from it – I read it the other day and as well as being excruciating, the only reason I had time to write it was that nothing of note happened to me! I suppose a a bit like now when I’m living in limbo.)
I think as long as you’re not unreasonably hurting other people by stopping, then that’s fine (although I can’t think that stopping a blog would actually harm anyone, unless you’d made a whole bunch of stuff up, like that Gay Girl in Damascus bawbag).
I occasionally still read BarrenBlogger’s archives, because it was such a well written blog. I’m by no means annoyed that it’s not updated though, but I’m glad she hasn’t deleted it. I suppose blogs are a partial record of what we’re going through at a certain time – you can get up and walk away whenever you want and calling it committing virtual suicide is waaay over the top.
I continue to follow “Ghost” blogs. I stop displaying them on my blog once they go over a year, but I keep them in my reader so that if they are ever updated I will know.
I don’t think abandoning a blog is like virtual suicide. Simply deleting the blog with no explanation would be closer to virtual suicide. I have several friends who once had blogs that haven’t been updated in years. For them their lives just got too busy, and other means of social media took the place of blogging (Facebook). Post started to get few and far between and then they just never came back.
I find it all fascinating and I find myself visiting these ghost blogs to see if there has been an update. I oftentimes go back through Lost & Found and look back at people to see where they are. I wonder about people that I have never met.
I’m one of those ppl that started blogging before I really had the time to blog, so it went abandoned. I always intended to blog more steadily, but only recently have begone to do so. I guess you would call my blog ‘cryo preserved’ not really dead 😉
I always leave them in my reader too. I wish there was way to mark them on blogrolls so that you knew if they were active or not- it is always so disappointing to be looking for new blogs and have lots of them come up abandoned. But it would be almost impossible to do by hand, since it can change so easily and so often. I do definitely agree with you about leaving closed blogs on the ALI blogroll because the archives can be very helpful.
I have a folder in my Google Reader titled No Posts Lately, and when I’m feeling like organizing stuff, I will drop things there. I’ve also taken to unsubscribing when people change locations so I hope they’re moving their stuff.
Maybe I’m too old, but I really don’t understand all the hype about online presence. Very few people are making money at blogging. If you make personal connections, those are not likely to stop because you’ve stopped blogging. Virtual suicide seems like a ridiculous term to me – maybe someone just decided they’d rather spend all their time playing Angry Birds. They could just be meaning to get back to blogging and never do. It’s more like virtual apathy, I’d say.
My blog is pretty close to becoming a ghost blog. That’s mostly because I’m not sure how to delete it. 🙂
It’s funny… I was just deleting ghost blogs.
I find that many if not most ghost blogs were not that great when they were alive, that the authors seemed to ramble on about nothing. Then of course after a while, it makes sense that they give up because they had nothing to say! Or at least chose to say nothing.
I think a lot of the ghosts just lost interest in blogging, didn’t have time, etc. Ghosts tend to be authors who never really got a lot of traffic or comments, didn’t respond to comments, etc. Basically bloggers who didn’t understand the importance of promotion and building a community.
I agree that abandoning a blog (for most people) is more akin to abandoning a hobby than virtual suicide. My thought about the statement in the Times was that many bloggers likely do not see their blog as their “self,” more as something they do. I think that for most people, abandoning a blog is like a journal only half used.
I think that, if anything, ghost blogs are more an act of virtual-self preservation than of virtual-self suicide… By leaving a blog up even when it’s been abandoned, the author is continuing her virtual presence and may even be acknowledging that although her IRL life has moved on from the experiences she focused on in the blog that her virtual self deserves to continue.
I’m quite intrigued by this topic. My first thought when I started reading this was, oh I have to tell Mel there are abandoned blogs on on the ALI blogroll but then you acknowledged that you keep them up on purpose so their archives will be accessible. I agree wih Jen, I wish they could be marked in some way b/c I’ve been so frustrated when looking for new people to follow and found so many of them abandoned.
I think ghost blogs are super creepy. I can’t imagine walking away from a blog, especially one where people commented and cared and never explaining that you would never return. I keep a few on my reader and blogroll and they make me nervous. I always wonder what happened to those people and I do think it’s kind of unfair for them to leave me, an engaged reader and commenter, hanging. I sometimes wonder if something horrible happened to them. I made my partner promise to go on my blog and tell my readers if something were to happen to me. I wouldn’t want them to think I’d abandoned them without a thought. I consider them my friends and I assume they would worry. And I feel like rightfully so. Even if you don’t have man followers I think it’s just so odd you’d leave it up there without even the suggestion that you’d never be back. I obviously feel very different about that space than others do.
I read a blog that was quiet for a few weeks and then the husband came on and announced that the authored had passed away suddenly and unexpectedly. That really shook me and was an acute and scary reminder of my own mortality. I almost always wonder if the same has happened to the authors of ghost blogs though I know it can’t possibly always be the case.
I have started a few blogs and had one especially that I wrote regularly (on another topic) before the one I have now. I deleted it and let my readers know about it a few weeks beforehand. Some of them are therefore fb-friends instead since they didn’t want to loose contact. It would be spooky to just leave it hanging without any explanation. That wouldn’t feel right at all.
I think that from the reader’s pov, ghost blogs are sorely disappointing. Very much like my real life friendships, I add blogs slowly and get attached to them so I hope that they will come back at some time. The good thing is that you do still have a way to communicate with the blogger if you never developed a personal relationship with her/him. It is also nice to have the archives to go back to.
From the blogger’s pov I imagine that they just simply get distracted and then forget about the blog. I doubt that anybody actively decides to just leave things hanging. Personally, I feel a sense of responsibility already to my (very few) readers.
I have two ghost blogs, and my IF blog which doesn’t update all that often most of the time. Mom’s cancer blog is now ghosty, for the most part, simply because she’s gone now and it’s been 2 1/2 years. I don’t have as much trouble dealing with it, so I no longer need a place to write about it. When I DO have those moments, I write, and I won’t delete it because it’s a record of what my thoughts were. My FMS blog was started just before I got pregnant with Colson and then I wasn’t doing treatments because I was pg…and now, well, the FMS is back but not as bad.
My regular blog has always been sporadic. I don’t have many readers so it feels like no one is reading and I’m tired of shouting into the void. When I need advice or help, or when something is really bothering me, I post.
I have one and it haunts me. Okay, just kidding a bit, but it does bother me. I let it languish because I felt like I never really found my voice, so i wasn’t as comfortable as I wanted to be and then I couldn’t figure out how to make the transition from blogging about one set of circumstances to another. It would have been so good to have the community support last year when my second son ended up in the NICU and then had other issues. I abandoned my blog due to my own awkwardness, I suppose, and it’s been hard to acknowledge that and wrap things up. But I should anyway.
I have a few ghost blogs and just recently came back to life I guess you would say. I quit blogging when life got to be too much. I had too much to say but didn’t know how to say it. There was never enough time in the day. And really my personal life just got out of control. Without my blog I missed everyone. I missed their lives. I blogged in my head. Now I want it back. Ending a blog that was alive and well hurt. I guess it was like suicide, just ending it.
I agree with those that find abrupt abandonment weird and worrisome. There are a couple of bloggers I’d developed a nice communication with that suddenly stopped posting and responding to comments. One I even emailed…no response. I get that sometimes the blog has outlived it’s purpose and the writer just needs to cut ties and move on, and keeping the archives as a reference can be helpful. But, it shouldn’t take long to just announce your plans…and if it wasn’t planned initially, at least to come back whenever and update your readers. I don’t equate it to “virtual suicide”… it’s just choosing another way to spend your time. But if your hobby involves others, it’s just courteous to let them know you won’t be back.
I leave them on my Reader too – for both of those reasons…
I have to wonder if it the decline is directly related to Twitter and FB, and now G+? It is easier to send a blip via phone then to hack out a whole post. Especially when most of the time I don’t have a whole post of interesting….
I continue to follow ghost blogs just in case a random post pops up. I guess having gone private I am a ghost blog myself.
I’d like to think that most virtual suicide is a result of true embracing of a non-virtual life experience. I am at a point now where I often wonder why I bother posting or why anyone would be interested. There is a certain aspect of this community that makes me feel tremendously guilty for having children- and I have little else to post about. Blogging now feels more like the angst-ridden middle school years than the exuberant grade school ones. I don’t know which crowd I fit in. Some friends of the early years have joined the popular ranks and become different people, some ended up moving to a different district (adoption, childfree) and feel like they are on another planet, and I sometimes pull up a post written by a friend that is less than complementary and think- are they talking about me?
I wish I’d kept some of the old blogs that went dormant years ago. In the hopes that there might be a post, an update, anything, y’know? but sometimes you also hear news second or third hand, like when Emily had her baby girl, ya know…if I ever give up Birch and Maple – and despite the dearth of posts, it’s not dead!! – I’ll let everyone know.
I don’t blog, so it’s easy for me to grumble, but …
I have no problem with people who close blogs down. I miss Niobe’s writing, I’d love to know about Grrl’s experiences, but I get that their blogs had (apparently) served their purposes, and the authors move on. And I don’t think that bloggers owe any ongoing obligation to the larger world to keep blogging forever (though I’m grateful that many decide to leave their blogs out there), but a “bye” post is, if not required, still much appreciated (by me).
Ghost blogs that bug me are the ones whose authors leave without saying ‘bye.’ I do worry about authors I’ve come to know and read if they just vanish without so much as a tweet. There are 3 (4?) I can name right now whose authors were dealing with some crisis or other (major! postpartum pre-e with no insurance; systemwide infection; molar pregnancy, respectively) and who then just vanished. I don’t have their blogs flagged in my reader, but I do go back to them and check them now and again (for years! one has been silent for over two years now and I still check back from time to time) and … nothing.
One personal finance blogger I followed just resumed blogging again after 2 years of silence. I found her only because I checked back. I won’t say she was (or should have been) apologetic, but her inaugural ‘new’ post did explain a bit about the factors that had led to to cease blogging (with no explanation, or even ‘bye,’ at the time she ceased) and it was nice to see her back.
Many of the blogs I used to follow either changed content, or turned into ghost blogs. I always seem to leave them on my reader, and always wonder about what happened to the writer. Eventually, I delete the links if they’re on my toolbar… but if it’s on my google reader, I tend to leave it there, just in case.
Well, clearly I *am* the owner of a ghost blog. It’s weird because I compose posts in my head all the time but never write them. Ugh. If I didn’t get the stats on my blog traffic, I would have deleted the site a long time ago. But I still get multiple hits a day on my archives about things like DHEA and pee stick pictures, so I figure it can’t hurt to leave them up there. Also, I go back every now and then to read some of my old posts and marvel at how witty I used to be. Heavy sigh.
I rarely read blogs anymore (is it a coincidence that I checked your blog the day after you wrote this post?) and only sign on to Facebook every other month or so. Therefore, I don’t even know what the eff is going on in the blogging and social world anyway, so my posts would be like reading a book on how to play Pac-Man or something. Snooze.
I’d love to catch up with you and get our budding 7 year olds together!! Do you have time in your busy schedule for your ol’ friend Snatch? 🙂
Like everyone here, I have “ghost blogs” in my reader. In fact, Sunny is one of them and I was so happy to see her response on here, and check out her blog again.
From my limited experience, it often does seem like a big event happens before the drop-off: like a pregnancy, or a mysterious problem alluded to, or a medical problem, then POUF! They’re gone. I worry about these bloggers, I assume the worst. I guess maybe it’s like IRL I disappeared for about two years from a lot of people’s lives. Then I reappeared once I gave birth. I keep hoping to see posts from the ghost blogs, because I hope they have made it through their struggles and maybe even have a happy ending.
I have a ghost blog, too. It was my college life blog, all about adventures in psychological research, applying to grad programs, and a bit of personal life mixed in. And then one day when I was 21 my blog’s focus changed to Finding Mr. Right. And now. Why? Well, mostly because student health services finally confirmed my fears. I had PCOS. I’d watched family members struggle with it for years, and I knew I wanted kids more than I wanted the rest of my education. I found Mr. Right, but then Blogger united with Google and made me change my password. I promptly forgot the new password and never updated again. Not that I would have anyway, since my followers were almost all female academics who were either choosing to remain childfree or putting it off. I would have felt judged. So in a way yes, it was a virtual self suicide for me even though I still lurk at all of their places. I rarely stop following a blog that hasn’t updated.
I AM the owner of a ghost blog. Once DD was born, time was scarce, and blogging was not part of my top ten, or even top fifty activities; though in the first few months of her life I did write a few obligatory posts to [hopefully] keep it going, mostly rehashing her birth story. IF is no longer my focus, parenting is. It seems misplaced and even inappropriate to document my parenthood experiences there and motivation is still an issue. I have not “updated” people on where this blog is headed, because I plain do not know. I am leaving it up in case I am inspired to write again. But you know, I never felt much of a “relational responsibility” to keep up with it. The blog was for me from the start, and the one place with few ‘rules’. Yes, the blog is open for people to observe and respond to my thoughts, but I do not ‘owe’ people an update (though it is nice). The support and relationships I’ve built with my readers in the past are not dependent on me posting or not.
Guilty. I recently put a post up after being away for 18 months and this was exactly the reason. Its creepy and dangling. Its like going over to your friend’s home to surprise her with cookies and walking in to find the house completely empty. Apologies.
I suppose I’m the (proud?) owner of one of those ghost blogs. The internet suicide description is an interesting one, and although I hadn’t thought about it in those terms, it very much resonates with me.
I am no longer the person I was when I was writing as IdleMindOfBeth. My life is completely different than it was in those days. And quite honestly, I’d rather not revisit them by remaining active in that space. And yet, deleting the blog isn’t an option for me. I don’t know if it’s been a resource to anyone or not, but I did write some pretty detailed information about some of the medical/procedural stuff I went through. If it can help someone, I’d rather leave it out there as some obscure link on a google search. After all, that’s how I found this community.
Guilty as charged. I don’t know what to do with my IF blog. I kind of started a family blog for friends & family that I want to make more robust. At the same time, I have started to realize that I don’t have a place that’s mine to share the thoughts I don’t/can’t put on the family blog. Too may walls up around myself but now that I have a bit more time, I’m struggling to figure out who I am and where my spaces are.
I wouldn’t say mine is a “ghost blog” quite yet…I have gone about a month or two between posts just because of life getting in the way. That and I really don’t know the direction my blog is going right now. It started off as an IF/PCOS blog…we stopped TTC for a while because my husband is out of work and we don’t have insurance coverage for IF…I write a lot about my hobbies and faith…it feels like a hodge podge right now and I worry that I’m losing readers because of it.
I don’t agree with the “online suicide” thing though. I wonder about the bloggers that have gone ghost, but I don’t begrudge them or feel they “owe” me anything. Most of these people I’m never going to meet…I care about them, in that “I’ve peeked into your live like a virtual voyeur” kind of way…but I don’t feel they owe me anything.
If a blog I follow hasn’t had a post in over three months, I move it to a “stagnant blog” folder in my reader. That way it’s still there and will notify me if the owner decides to post again.
I guess I have what you could call a ghost blog. We pretty much gave up on having children and for the most part, have accepted it. I thought about writing about that, but really, I just don’t have a lot to say about it (other than what is already there). I didn’t intend to stop posting – it just sort of happened – and then I didn’t have a lot to say about it. I also lost some of the few readers/followers I had when I switched from blogger to wordpress, so explaining my lack of posts felt strange – like I was explaining it to myself (which felt unnecessary). On top of all that, soon after our decision to stop ttc, I was diagnosed with severe cervical dysplasia, and now I’m more interested in getting my cervix back to a healthy and non-cancerous and precancerous state than thinking about our decision to live without children.
I didn’t delete my blog, mainly because I thought it might help someone else. I don’t really feel like I have committed any kind of virtual suicide – more that I just don’t have a lot more to say about the topic that was the focus of my blog. I can see where it’s irritating for people to come across a ghost blog, though – and it makes me wonder if I should post some kind of final message.
I have a ghost blog, but I am still here and still comment on other blogs. I didn’t blog for very long, or have much of a following, but life just got in the way of it ,I started my egg donor cycle, got pregnant from that cycle, my dad was diagnosed with Brain cancer, he passed away and then my baby was born. It was to much for me at one time. I’d love to blog again but so much has happened since that last post that I wouldn’t know where to begin.
“Internet suicide” sounds pretty harsh. I agree with some of the others, I think people just get busy, their lives & priorities change. I’m one of those people who used to start a (paper & ink) journal, write faithfully for awhile, & then it would peter out into nothing… until I started the next journal a few months or years down the road. The fact that I’ve managed to blog at least a couple of times a month for almost four years now (particularly since I started my blog years after our daughter’s stillbirth and our infertility treatments) is pretty amazing to me.
I do wonder what has happened to people whose blogs I used to follow, though — especially if they were in the middle of a pregnancy or treatment, etc. I go through my reader every now & then & any blog that hasn’t had a post in 3-6 months gets moved to an Inactive folder. I go through that folder now & then and see if the links are still valid. If the blog is still there, I will leave it in my reader; if there’s no longer a blog there at all, I’ll regretfully delete the link.
I shift these blogs into a ‘Dormant’ section in my Google reader. The best part of this is occasionally I’ll see a (1) next to that heading and there will be a post from one of these blogs! Especially in the IF world there are just times when people need a break from their blog. There are times when we’re completely engrossed with them and they are the world’s best therapy, but there also come other times when they do more harm than good. I love when someone comes back and says what has been going on. sometimes their whole outlook has changed – sometimes they’ve just simply been away living their life. But it always feels like bumping into someone you haven’t seem for ages and never meant to lose track of.
I leave them on my Reader in a different category, since their presence there doesn’t cost me anything, and every now and then surprise! someone posts after years of silence.
I think much of the “fading” phenomenon has to deal with people who do it on a whim… not those who blog b/c they NEED written expression. Or it’s from people who do it for a particular purpose and that purpose ends.
As for what I do with them… if it’s someone I’ve really invested in, I leave it up so I can see if they pop back in. If not, I delete it after about 6 mos or so. My mind needs a very clean slate. I can’t stand “clutter” of any sort.
I think as long as you’re not unreasonably hurting other people by stopping, then that’s fine.
My blogroll and reader aren’t very long, so if a blog that I am following doesn’t post anything new in over 2 weeks, I usually bump them to the bottom. Then, if they still don’t post anything new in a month, I delete them. It usually doesn’t take long to find a replacement blog that is providing good content that is frequently updated.
I leave them on my reader, forgetting they exist as only blogs with new posts appear (and then I want to check something and ask to show all blogs and am surprised to see all those blogs..). There is this blogger who disappeared maybe two years ago. Anyway, recentally I came across a new blog I was sure it was her in a new dig. (though now I don’t think so, just some coincidence). But maybe some want that part of their life shut and start anew someplace else, where their previous self (or blog self) is not known?
[and hmmm.. I also have such a blog. My original blog served it’s purpose, I have moved on. Not so long ago I put a post just stating I had a child (they were not with me when I was ttc), and was quite surprised that people responded..
I think life gets busy, and bloggers feel that they arent being read because people don’t leave comments anymore. So they neglect writing. I don’t think they mean to stop all together. It’s hard to write when you feel like noone reads what you put out there. There needs to be more people like you that unite bloggers, and make blogging a conversation.
I am not a blogger, just a reader and felt abandoned when Naked Ovary vanished without a word. I had followed her for years and years. Through her long adoption journey (during my IF journey) and then unexpected birth of her her own baby.
I guess I am saying, as busy as anyone is, really, how long would a one sentence goodbye take to followers that you have had for years….
I only just celebrated my one year blog anniversary not long ago. I first started blogging after reading many IF-related blogs and thought that I could offer something in the form of support and information as I survived 6 years of IF. I happily joined your Stirrups Queen blog roll and eagerly scrolled down the vast blogs that presented as “Parenting after IF”. To my saddness, I can easily say that many I clicked on to were just that: Ghost blogs.
I’ve started and ended blogs… it’s not because I am killing my virtual self, it’s because I am tired of the blog itself, of what I’m writing on that blog. So I stop posting on it and start a new one. I’ve been blogging for probably 12 years in some way (I wrote my own HTML for my first blog, it wasn’t really a blog but I updated it like an online journal) and I can’t even count how many I’ve started and ended since then. It’s just hype from someone who’s just trying to be sensationalist, he wants to be the one who “calls” it. Ha!
I have a semi-ghost blog. There is a post saying I have a new blog and linking to it, but I leave the old blog up because it’s the blog that has my infertility/assisted reproduction in Switzerland story in it. And recently, I heard from a woman (at the new blog) who found the old blog by searching for “IVF in Switzerland.” So I leave it up, inactive, because perhaps once a year the archives help somebody just a little bit.
If Iwas really committed to them when they were active, I keep them in my reader. One actually came back more than a year later, and I’m glad I hadn’t removed her!
Also, now that I don’t blog very regularly (shame on me), I get that some people may seem gone, but they are just otherwise occupied and they’ll come back when they can or need to. I myself have gone as many as 2 months without a word while working through the busiest period of my life.
Personally, if I were to end my blog, I would announce it in a final post, but I wouldn’t take it down. Just in case something in it could be helpful to someone else. While I was pregnant, I found that most triplet moms don’t continue to post, but what they left behind really helped during the pregnancy.
You know, the blog world is changing. It’s not the latest hip thing. But really? Demise? I think it’s more a case of it finding its place in the world, like reality TV shows (but classier). I never understood the concept of pruning my reader. It costs me nothing to keep ghost blogs on the list, and sometimes the author comes back. I guess I assumed everyone did the same… but perhaps some are more organised…
Bea