Comments on: Sometimes it’s just a waste

By: John

John — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 17:57:38 +0000

Thanks Walt. In their book, Microtrends, Penn & Zalesne (2007) observed that between 1995 and 2005, it was the “wordy” magazines like Atlantic Monthly that were increasing in circulation. I speculate that the blog trend might be following this pattern. As you say, there’s not enough data yet.

By: walt

walt — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 15:56:05 +0000

John: I don’t do averages any more–they’re just too misleading or meaningless for the universe of liblogs; it’s too heterogeneous. So, for example: For the 326 blogs where I could measure length in all three years, the overall average post length increased by about 2% from 2007 to 2008 and a little over 1% from 2008 to 2009–but the average of all word-per-post lengths increased about 5% each year.

What I did find is that most blogs (where I could measure) do have slight increase in word counts, with the wordier blogs (on a per-post basis) increasing even more. I agree that long-form writing is increasing, but it’s nowhere near a universal pattern. (There are no universal patterns…)

By: John

John — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 14:41:44 +0000

Hi Walt, I’m following your “But still they blog …” notes with interest. I have recently noticed something, and wonder if I’m just wandering down another false path in the forest, and thought I’d check your way since you keep numbers on these things.

Are blog posts, on average, getting longer?

With the advent of Twitter, blog posts tended to be freer of short status-type posts. But recently, I noticed that posts are getting longer, the kind that we would call TLDR. I take it as a good sign for long-form writing, but just thought I’d check your way.

By: walt

walt — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 17:08:52 +0000

Ivan, thanks for that. And yes, once in a while, “chucking it all” is the right outcome. Fortunately, it was only a couple days’ work, not a couple months or years…

By: Ivan Chew

Ivan Chew — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 06:56:25 +0000

Heh, “interesting” is subjective. I found this post a good example of the editing process in preparing a book.