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The magazine is using stats from Technorati for the analysis, which found a decline in the percentage of blogs that are active compared to the total number of blogs tracked by Technorati.

It's a familiar pattern-millions of people got excited by But after a while, they grew tired of maintaining them-or moved on to newer social phenomena like MySpace or Twitter-and let their blogs go silent.

Does this mean And is that good or bad?

The bloggers who are still around are debating the issue.

Blog community response: "Why, after all, do we do it?

If we really had a good answer to that we'd be in a better position to understand why so many of us stop." -Virtual Economics "If the 15 million blog figure is, indeed, accurate, I'm torn.

On one hand, it's disappointing to see the medium lose some of its momentum.

On the other hand, the disappearance of may be a healthy development if it raises the profile of blogs generating solid content on a regular basis." -Mark Evans "Interesting reporting by Green, but I see this as the inevitable shakeout that had to be coming to the blogosphere.

Those that aren't committed to the space will go away, and leave less clutter for the rest of us to wade through.

That makes the better blogs that continue to grow a...

And if you grew up with computer games, it's a more familiar platform than the desktop metaphor generations of office workers required.Third: advertising.

The virtual show looked empty compared to a real-world show; it had 6,000-plus visitors over three days.

The emptiness was by design to allow more visitors while minimizing lag.

Nonetheless, Dell was there with a virtual configurator on which you could specify your new laptop.

Elsewhere inworld, you can drive your new Toyota or Pontiac and read your Reuters news.Moving into Second Life is a way for old, apparently stuffy companies to reinvent their image for the notoriously hard-to-reach younger crowd who are media-savvy and ad-cynical.

There is real gold in them thar virtual hills.Finally, a real reason to upgrade my desktop.  Technorati tags: virtual Minute life?

Hour life?

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