Steve Rubel’s recent post on Adage.com, The Case of the Incredible Shrinking Blogosphere, highlights a couple of issues I mentioned in my recent post on the economics of blogging.

Blogging takes a lot of persistance and isn’t for the faint of heart. Relatively few people who start blogs are able to keep them up on a regular basis–as I noted about 80 percent of blogs tracked by Technorati haven’t been updated in the last 90 days.

Microblogging, as Rubel points out, is a good alternative for those who want to sent an occasional missive out to their friends and colleagues on the web.

My guess is that blogs will become increasingly oriented to those looking for some sort of financial gain, directly or indirectly, from the enormous investment in time that it takes to establish a following.