Another Vancouver blog bites the dust

Not this one, haters. No, I'm referring to the MetroBlogging Vancouver site, to which I used to contribute political commentary and amusing snippets of Vancouver city life.

WARNING: For those who find the inane rivalries of bloggers, well, uh, inane, READ NO FURTHER. I'll probably have a post about evil dictators or the garbage strike or the how the Taliban wastes your tax dollars up shortly for my loyal fans.

My involvement with MetroBlogging began in the really exciting days just after free, user-friendly software like the one I'm using made blogging popular... and before Facebook rendered most ill-maintained blogs obsolete. Even Skeletor of He-Man fame got into the act with a little podcast from Castle Greyskull (shown above).

It was an exciting time... well, for some of us. I enjoyed my little foray into citizen journalism, but gradually, my actual paid writing gigs, regular teaching job and other mix-and-match of freelance creative duties have simply taken away any time for the project.

If I'm going to blog, and blog with passion, I'll blog on my own blog.

Lo and behold, I seem to be merely the first in a veritable stampede of authors away from the site, which was having trouble attracting regular posters even before the summer crunch.

MetBlogs Captain Jeffery Simpson has valiantly kept the site alive pretty much on his own with a Herculean effort for several weeks. But how long can he keep up the solo effort?

Question #1: Can Beyond Robson finally claim the title of Vancouver's definitive Web 2.0 blog - by default?

Question #2: Is this the moment for Urban Vancouver to finally reconquer a little market share in the Vancouver blogosphere?

Question #3: Does anyone aside from geeks like myself really care about any of this?