Personal blogging started to die when their 'creators' started looking for ways to monetize their blogs, and I'm not referring to AdWords. What made blogging so interesting in the early 2000s was their independence and free-spirited writing - anything was fair game, but they still managed to be a whole lot more interesting than the banal updates we now see on social networks.
As the bloggers courted sponsors so they waved good bye to the independent voice, and why would I now want to read something that has been sanitised in order to favour the sponsors? 2OceansVibe is a classic example, where everything is sponsored by various brands. Should a blog like this ever post something negative about some brand or product, I'd be left wondering is the blogger really unhappy with it, or is he just p'ed that the brand in question didn't want to advertise on his blog.
