Where Have All The Bloggers Gone?

I must confess a horrible obsession.  I can’t leave the stats on WordPress alone.  This is not limited to my personal blog stats anymore, but has now expanded to include the general WordPress stats (i.e., bloggers, new posts, comments, words posted).  These numbers change daily.  I have been following them compulsively since the great “pressed to death” event. You may have notice that in October the “Freshly Pressed” featured blogs went unchanged for an extended period of time.  The trend I’ve noticed has disturbed me to the point of paranoia.  I have sought solace from my blog friends, but succeed only in having instilled some of them with trepidation matching my own.  

I have scoured the forum looking for any explanation, but haven’t had the gumption to actually pose the question to the WordPress gods.  You don’t tug on Superman’s cape; you don’t spit in the wind; you don’t pull the mask off that ole Lone Ranger; and you don’t mess around with . . . well, you get where I’m going with this.  I don’t know what would happen if I pissed them off, but I don’t imagine it would be good.  No “Freshly Pressed” for you! Ever again!  I might simply vanish from the face of the Blogosphere like one of the bloggers in the stats.  I may well wake up to find disembodied horse head wallpaper on my laptop.  All my posts could mysteriously be turned to drivel.  Oh wait, most of them are drivel already.

Where have all the bloggers gone?  When I started blogging again, the beginning of last month, there were something like 409,000+ bloggers.  Over the course of about three weeks the number dropped to 403,000ish.  That’s around 2,000 per week vanishing without a trace.  So that rate of decline could be accounted for reasonably, right?  Even if this downward spiral continued at a steady pace, it would take almost four years for everyone to be gone . . . plenty of time to reverse the trend. 

Alarmingly, that number escalated to roughly 2,000 a day gone, lost, absent, MIA!  At this startling new rate of loss, there will be no one left in just over six months.  Perhaps my concern is unfounded.  I don’t know exactly where the money comes from to keep the power on at WordPress.  Perhaps some wealthy philanthropist foots the bill to keep the juice flowing for all of us fat, dumb and happy bloggers.  I’ve always believed in the concept of “no free lunch.”  So far as my experience with WordPress, it’s been an all-you-can-eat smorgasbord with no end in sight.  At what point will WordPress be “hard pressed” to keep the steam trays full? 

Last Week:  The best of 396,236 bloggers, 439,873 new posts, 475,710 comments, & 104,765,675 words posted today on WordPress.com.

Today:  The best of 357,326 bloggers, 426,717 new posts, 449,361 comments, & 103,793,313 words posted today on WordPress.com

Do the math . . . the ranks of the missing is running over five thousand a day now.  We are shrinking!  Is everybody leaving for other destinations?  Facebook?  Goggle+?  Blogspot?  Is WordPress becoming obsolete? I don’t know what’s up.  Does anyone else know?  Anybody, anybody?

Late Breaking Update:  WordPress is making a remarkable comeback.  The new stats for today:  The best of 408,784 bloggers, 418,064 new posts, 448,969 comments, & 100,717,797 words posted today on WordPress.com.  That’s . . . like . . . over 50,000 bloggers back.  It is obvious that I have no clue what these numbers are all about.  Or maybe the WordPress Gods are trying to reassure me.  You never know.