F*ckedWhat? The dirty little secret about FuckedWeblog -- a site chronicling the "death" of weblogs, as its inspiration did Internet startups -- or, at least, the coverage of it, is that the implication is all wrong. Yes, a notable number of long-standing blogs have ceased publishing (at least temporarily), but there is no such "winnowing of the weblogging ranks," as Suck put it. Blogging as a whole is bigger -- in terms of number of sites, publishers, and readers -- than ever and, by my records, continues to grow as fast or faster than it ever has. In the time it's taken FW to catalog 75 or so weblog "deaths" (including temporary hiatuses), which is, admittedly, no where near comprehensive, there have been at least 20 thousand new weblogs created. Yes, most of them, we'll never see. But by sheer numbers, its easy to extrapolate that most of the best bloggers to be are not yet (or are just recently) within our midst. The rise and fall of the Nasdaq, which is what the whole dot-com thing was about, is not totally irrelevant to the web as a medium for personal expression and the democratization of media -- there is some relationship (or at least there was) -- but it is not directly corollary, either. The web will continue to infuse people's lives whether or not there's a get-rich-quick ponzi scheme infusing it with hype. It can't be stopped. That is not to say there is nothing to the seemingly sudden influx of long-time bloggers who have decided to adjust their priorities. I think its an inevitable and healthy reaction to the massive transition so many of us are going through. To each his or her own. Hopefully those webloggers got something out of the experience. We know many of us readers got a lot out of their sites and will be sad to see them go. But it's all about the churn, baby. Get over it.