I keep thinking about starting a blog. But I never bother, because I think there’s no point. Should I start one? Or not?

“It’s nothing personal,” begins reader Carole Hayes, “but please don’t start a blog. If it’s any good, it’ll be just another one that I fail to keep up with reading.” Carole is not alone in her hair-tearing response to blog overload; news has emerged this week of a forthcoming book by author Andrew Keen which indicts the gigantic blogging community for “destroying culture”, and for “undermining our sense of what is true and what is false, what is real and what is imaginary.” It’s a harsh accusation to lay at the door of, say, a 13-year old girl who’s merely writing a few sentences about the deteriorating health of her pet rabbit, but the fact that she is doing so at all demonstrates how easy blogging has become. You can start publishing to the internet within seconds by using services such as Blogger or Wordpress; the search engine Technorati currently reports a staggering 175,000 new blogs every day, and a grand total of around 75 million.

So why would you bother, given the inevitability of your blog disappearing into a sea of political posturing and wearisome whining? Some are attracted by the prospect of joining a like-minded communitiy that write in a similar style, or about similar subjects. “Using social-based blogging services such as LiveJournal helps to round up an audience,” emails Vicki Macintosh, “rather than giving you the feeling that you’re bellowing into a void.” Obsessing about the size of ones readership is a common issue for bloggers; while gaining a short-lived peak in audience size is relatively easy to achieve, retaining those people over a period of time is only managed only by long-established blogs, such as BoingBoing.net, that are often maintained by a team of writers. Simon Hartnell believes that worrying about readership distracts from the whole point: “You have to enjoy writing for your own pleasure, otherwise blogging is going to feel like a chore, and you’ll probably give up pretty quickly.” It’s a warning that many would no doubt offer on their own blogs, had they not abandoned them; it’s estimated that over 200 million blogs lie dormant, many just tailing off without so much as a cheerio. Indeed, American IT company Gartner has predicted that the number of active blogs will peak this year at around 100 million, as the number of those giving up starts to outstrip those keen to give it a go. The final word comes from reader Jason Day, and I’m tempted to agree: “Give it a try. But be prepared for a feeling of overwhelming futility.”