• If it happens once, it’s an accident.
• If it happens twice, it’s a coincidence.
• If it happens three times, you have a “trend” story on your hands.

So 3 prominent bloggers quitting the scene within a period of 1-2 years = trend?

The one thing about the “golden rule” was that it generally applied to the brick-and-mortar context, not as much when you’re talking about 3 or more bloggers out of the hundreds of millions of blogs out there.

Statistically, even 100 top bloggers out of a universe of 100 million blogs would be 1 / 1,000,000. In decimal points that would be 0.000001% of the blogging population.

So wondering if “blogging is dead” is akin to wondering if fixed-line telephones are dead or if the fax machine is dead. Nice linkbait, but I don’t think there’s much substance or value to that argument.

Jason Lee Miller notes in his WebProNews piece that fame (or the price of it) might be the cause of the backlash against TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington, Dan Lyons AKA Fake Steve Jobs et al.

Valleywag also notes that Dan scored a book deal out of his Fake Steve Jobs gig. I don’t know about you, but posting 10-20 posts a day on a blog can only be justified against the reward of a book deal or other financially rewarding gig.

In the case of Mike Arrington, TechCrunch has gained sufficient reader critical mass in recent years to merit him taking a step back from the death threats and gobs of spittle to the face. With the goal accomplished, there’s no necessity to take the next bullet (or wad of spit).

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My opinion is that each of the A-Listers had an outcome in mind, whether it was a book deal, a movie deal, being able to build up advertising rates to $32,500 per month.

If anything, it was more “mission accomplished” than “i give up”.

And for the other bloggers out there who are prone to engage in a bout of “should I continue blogging?” type navel-gazing, it might be a sign that you’re just not serious enough about this to have your effort questioned at every turn.

Back to work.

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For ideas and strategies about managing your blogging efforts as a business, check out Secret Blog Weapon.

Fake Steve Jobs (AKA Forbes senior editor Dan Lyons) has been penning the Fake Steve satirical blog of the Apple co-founder to the bemusement of folks in the Valley. With potrayals of Microsoft boss Bill Gates as “Beastmaster Bill” (both Bill and the real Steve are fans of the blog), it’s garnered nothing less than a rabid following.

The blog contains nuggets of Silicon Valley life, like the recent entry “Java Developers Finally Realize The Party’s Over“:

But I think they don’t quite know which party they’re talking about. See this screed where some Javatard says Apple has been spitting in his face because we didn’t include Java 6 in Leopard. Or something. So he says he’s selling his Mac. His headline is, “So long, Apple. The party’s over.” Well he’s right about one thing. The party is over — the Java party, that is. Glad to see the Javatards have finally figured that out.

The pithy entries, are as amusing as the videos like “No Violence, But Clearly An IP Violation”

WebProNews conducted an interview with FakeSteve in conjunction with the launch of the new 248-page “Options” penned by FakeSteve, here’s an excerpt of an interview WebProNews did with FakeSteve:

1) The black turtlenecks you wear – humble article of well-made clothing, or a divine right conveyed upon you by the higher power that inspires gadgets like the iPod and the iPhone?

The former. I view my outfit as a form of monk’s robes. The idea is to abolish vanity and express my humility so that I can focus completely on my art. All I want to do is create beautiful objects. That is the only thing I want to think about. Not trivial things like clothing.

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If anything, this is a classic case study that strong content can bring you to high places…

Now on with beautiful objects and creating things…