State of the Blogosphere 2013

Oh, dear. Unfortunately, it's not been great for Bermuda blog owners in recent times. I chalk it up to general burnout, for the most part. Despite a new political party in power, controversial issues rampant on the island (gay rights? Let's rock!) and continued problems such as unemployment and race relations ever-present, we're down to no more than three regularly-active blogs* in Bermuda (this discounts wholly-personal blogs, which aren't covered here).

One could say that the corporate world has won; Bernews and the Royal Gazette don't suffer from a lack of article commentary, and from what I gather, the Facebook groups that discuss issues remain at least somewhat popular in terms of quantity of subscribers/members.

The political parties here seem content to operate their online ventures in a vacuum-of-sorts; the OBA remains isolated to Facebook while the PLP blog continues to operate as a propoganda machine instead of a conveyor of information and suggestions.

However, there's still a place for independent bloggers, I think. As long as popular blogs like Catch-A-Fire remain thriving and relevant (and I see no reason to believe that won't be the case over the next year or two), local blogs still have the opportunity to thrive and become a point of reference for Bermudians in general. We may just have to re-invent, expand and innovate. No, that doesn't mean I'm giving away $1,000 for the next blog comment, in order to get more traffic.

Archived SotBs:

• October 2008
• May 2011

* (Catch-A-Fire, Vexed and Breezeblog)