Sustainability of blogging behavior: A survival rate analysis

The increasing popularity of User-Generated Content (UGC), such as blogs, wikis, photo-/video-sharing, and social network sites, has raised serious challenges to a cornerstone of modern mass communication – the division of labor among the media, sources, and audiences. Given the short history, the sustainability of UGC is an open question calling for close examination. The study focuses on blogging behavior. Based on a random sample of 25,000 blog sites from blog.sina.com.cn with posts published between 2005 and 2009, we have developed a time-dependency model to describe and explain changes in sustainability of blogging. The model shows that blogging behavior follows an exponentially decaying curve that bloggers are most likely to quit during the initial phase but become increasingly stable as time goes by. Further analysis uncovers the significant impact of blogger’s dedication and time availability on blogging sustainability.