When I gave up blogging six months ago, the reaction to it was astonishing. It was akin to being witness to my own funeral. It was considered such a momentous event that I was invited on to more or less every news channel going. Weird. The question I was asked most often was if my decision signalled the inevitable decline of the British political blogosphere. I protested that no, it didn't, and that there were many excellent blogs out there and plenty of talented people who would replace me and several other leading blogging lights, like Labour MP Tom Harris, who had also decided to quit.
Six months on I am less sure. I rarely look at any blogs nowadays. I don't think I'm alone in that. Many of my friends in politics say the same thing. Why? I have come to the conclusion that it's because the mainstream media has eaten up the independent political blogosphere.
Perhaps it was always inevitable that once newspapers, TV and radio organisations decided that the way to beat the bloggers was to join them, the game would be up. First it was the Guardian's Comment is free, then Telegraph blogs entered the fray. But it wasn't just them, it was the fact that many well known journalists and commentators decided (or were ordered by their editors) to take up the blogging game. And with them came the financial backing to market them.
Those of us who were "first movers" remained insulated. We had already got our audiences, thank you very much, and they would remain loyal. Guido Fawkes, ConservativeHome and I continued to attract a larger audience than the likes of Ben Brogan, Paul Waugh and Michael White. But the drawbridge had come down to new entrants. No matter how hard some very talented independent bloggers tried, they just couldn't get a mass audience. And so slowly, but surely, they fell by the wayside.
In some cases, it had nothing to do with audience size – they just got bored or their lives moved on. You want proof? Of the Top 30 blogs in the annual Total Politics poll from 2009 one third no longer exist. And the appeal of the others on the right is not what it was. Guido Fawkes's blog is now largely written by someone else. ConservativeHome, for reasons I find hard to define, is no longer quite the sparky read it was before the election.
By way of contrast, over the last two years left-of-centre blogs have been on the ascendency, and in many ways deservedly so. LabourList, Left Foot Forward, Next Left and Political Scrapbook have all attracted lots of interest from the media. Will Straw, now of the IPPR, but the creator of Left Foot Forward, was rarely off our TV screens until recently. But despite the huge amount of coverage they have gained, the audience for such sites remain relatively insignificant.
For whatever reason, the political blogosphere in this country has not met the expectations of many. It has created media careers for a small group of the chosen few – me among them. But apart from Guido's several scalps, what has the political blogosphere really achieved beyond giving the voiceless a voice?
So what of the future? I think the way forward for mass audience blogs is with group blogs. To that effect in a few weeks I am launching a new multi-authored site called The Daley: Iain Dale & Friends. It won't have an editorial line, it won't be politically partisan, and it will cover culture, the media and sport as well as core UK and world politics. I've recruited 40 or 50 friends to write for the site. Some are well known, others aren't. The thing they have in common in that they're all great writers. And I'm giving a second life to some of the best bloggers who've stopped blogging over the last year. Will it work? No idea. But it's costing nothing and if it fails the only red face will be mine.