Not trying to be a party pooper, Carr nonetheless offers some sobering analysis:
As blogs have become mainstream, they've lost much of their original personality. "Scroll down Technorati's list of the top 100 blogs and you'll find personal sites have been shoved aside by professional ones," writes one corporate blogger, Valleywag's Paul Boutin, in the new Wired. "Most are essentially online magazines: The Huffington Post. Engadget. TreeHugger. A stand-alone commentator can't keep up with a team of pro writers cranking out up to 30 posts a day. When blogging was young, enthusiasts rode high, with posts quickly skyrocketing to the top of Google's search results for any given topic, fueled by generous links from fellow bloggers ... That phenomenon was part of what made blogging so exciting. No more." The buzz has left blogging, says Boutin, and moved, at least for the time being, to Facebook and Twitter.