In the last couple of days I've found myself reading quite a few blogspot posts, thanks to following up http addresses left in comments on some of the blogs I enjoy reading on here. The thing that struck me was how much writing takes place there compared with blogland here; stories about people's experiences and lives and hobbies - the sort of people-watching extravaganza that, to me, is the major appeal of blogging.

Here, over the past few months, there seems to be less and less writing; I was particularly saddened by the disappearance of Emsbabee's blog recently, and many others are writing less. Instead, there is a proliferation of photos, links to other sites, jokes, links to Twitter, brief references to being bored at work or cryptic utterances about blogging and bloggers. None of which is wrong - but it seems that if you like reading about people's lives, thoughts, experiences, the choice is becoming ever smaller, unlike it seems compared with the majority of blogspot blogs I have come across.

Why is this? Is it because blogland is more of a community chat forum? I have yet to find a home page where blogs are listed as a starting point for new bloggers in blogspot, as it appears here in blog.co.uk, or a directory. Maybe you have to be a member of blogspot to find one. Maybe you don't need one - perhaps the fun is following links to friends of friends, as you can do here, without ever feeling that everyone knows everyone else.

In one way it is nice to be part of a place where everyone seems to know, or know of, everyone else. But I wonder sometimes if it isn't a disadvantage too. Sometimes I feel, particularly when it is sunny outside or I am stressed and tired and in need of a bit of light relief, that blogland seems like a party that has gone on too long, the participants tired and running out of things to say, with occasional tantrums from people who have overdosed on too much sugar. And the dependency on quantitative measures to suggest popularity - as defined by visitor numbers or length of service doesn't help nor does the static nature of the lists of users. I wonder, if I was new to blogging, and discovered that one of the apparently most popular users on blog (according to the community page) was a woman called Varsha Kale who hasn't blogged for 424 days or a man called puisi cinta who not only hasn't blogged for 321 days but blogs in a language that the majority of English bloggers won't understand. Hardly encouraging, is it?

On the other hand, the only thing that stopped me walking away from it this week was a pm and the prospect of a blog meet with people I like very much and who I wouldn't have met if it weren't for blogging. Which might explain why I, like a lot of people, don't want to sever all ties from something that has given such a lot of pleasure. I just hope I can hang on and blogland will collectively recover its enthusiasm and sense of fun or receives a massive injection of new bloggers to liven things up.