I have over 300 feeds in my reader. I do not read all of them, although I skim/scan all of them. I probably only read a handful of posts in any real level of detail, the rest in varying ways. I am starting to cut back again on the number of subscriptions that I have.

I read more blogs than I did six months ago.

I would say that the quality is remaining roughly the same, although I have dropped blogs shortly after determining that they didn't have what I was looking for. However, most of the ones that I have been reading consistently are staying about the same.

Re: Twitter: I generally do not rely on Twitter along to serve up links. I rely more on FriendFeed (which includes the Twitter streams of the people that I follow) plus the other entries that come through there, plus Google Reader and shares. Twitter/FriendFeed serve me faster specks or nuggets of information, but not the detail I expect from a good blog post.

“Blogging is dead”: assuming that the sentence is true, which I don't agree with, it would affect the writer more than the reader. To most people, a blog is just another website.

I agree with you about long blog pieces.

Is it more pertinent that blogging is dead to the writer or the reader?

For me, a long blog piece better be sweet, thoughtful and satisfying.