Just a passing fad?

At one point in time 3-4 years ago, I counted more than 25 friends, colleagues and classmates who blogged frequently. It used to be fun reading varied expressions of humour, philosophy, cussedness or general points of view. Not anymore.

Perhaps I need to find newer blogs, but the regular contributors to blogs seem to have dropped dramatically. And the ones that still remain are much less prolific than before. While the easiest hypothesis (one endorsed robustly by the wife) explaining this phenomenon could be that blogging was a fad which is passing its baton to newer fads like twitter or facebook, there could be other reasons for this too. A few listed here:

1. Perhaps blogging is an outlet for the inability to express your innermost thoughts to a very close friend. 3-4 years out of business school, disillusioned with corporate life, not yet married - a perfect time and age to blog. Now, the same cohort is mostly reconciled with their jobs, has a spouse to communicate with, or is generally plain busy with kids, career or grocery shopping. Therefore lesser blogging.
2. Freshly minted bloggers harboured secret dreams of world conquest via the next masterpiece novel (I know I certainly did! Fame, riches, fawning women - I would be the toast of the town). However, after the first few pioneers in this field did just that to mediocre success at best (think Amit Varma's My Friend Sancho or Great Bong's random book or Meenakshi Madhavan's You Are Here; though perhaps Sidin Vadukut's Dork was the exception), the dream faded and consequently blogging became less attractive.
3. Mind control through the popularization of blogging was a secret CIA plot for world domination which was foiled by an intrepid US President working under the alias of Dubyaman.

I must confess that the 3rd reason is just because a list of 2 seems too short! Anyhow, the fact remains that following blogs aint what it used to be.