While pouring over the latest issue of my favorite magazine over the weekend, I was shocked to read this obituary to blogging.

The first four paragraphs really stung me:

Thinking about launching your own blog? Here’s some friendly advice: Don’t. And if you’ve already got one, pull the plug.

Writing a weblog today isn’t the bright idea it was four years ago. The blogosphere, once a freshwater oasis of folksy self-expression and clever thought, has been flooded by a tsunami of paid bilge. Cut-rate journalists and underground marketing campaigns now drown out the authentic voices of amateur wordsmiths. It’s almost impossible to get noticed, except by hecklers. And why bother? The time it takes to craft sharp, witty blog prose is better spent expressing yourself on Flickr, Facebook, or Twitter.

If you quit now, you’re in good company. Notorious chatterbox Jason Calacanis made millions from his Weblogs network. But he flat-out retired his own blog in July. “Blogging is simply too big, too impersonal, and lacks the intimacy that drew me to it,” he wrote in his final post.

Impersonal is correct: Scroll down Technorati’s list of the top 100 blogs and you’ll find personal sites have been shoved aside by professional ones. Most are essentially online magazines: The Huffington Post. Engadget. TreeHugger. A stand-alone commentator can’t keep up with a team of pro writers cranking out up to 30 posts a day.

I’m sorry to say that I too, have been noticing this trend. When I first started blogging back in 2000, many of my friends had blogs too. We wrote about silly things like what we did over the weekend, who is dating whom, relationship woes, and the mind-blowing circus that is college life.

Slowly but surely, these blogs began to remain untouched and neglected. We were out of college now and living adult lives – who had the time to blog? Other friends cited the lack of anonymity on the web as their reason to stop blogging. Many, like Mr. Boutin states in his article, shrugged their shoulders and said that Facebook/Flickr/Twitter was easier.

I’ve also found that I get discouraged whenever I read about blog rankings. As they say, the popular only get more popular while the little guys continue to suffer in numbers. As such, I tend to ignore sites such as Technorati and Digg for the repetitiveness of their featured sites.

So why do I continue to blog?

I blog because I like to write. And as a born researcher and human sponge, I love to share my thoughts, findings, and amusings.

And the narcissistic side of me wants to broadcast this to the world.

I am definitely not in it for the money. I only get about a hundred unique hits a day, and I hardly ever advertise my blog. Besides, I’m not sure if I ever can use blogging as a source of income, because I’m afraid that my passion for writing is greater than my abilities.

Why do you blog?