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'Expert Twitter' Only Goes So Far – Bring Back Blogs

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Re: 'Expert Twitter' Only Goes So Far – Bring Back Blogs

#21

Post by Nasrudith »

imglorp wrote: post #17
joelrunyon wrote: post #13

I've been on this train for a long, long time. If you don't own your platform, you don't own your content. Register your domain, install wordpress, start your own blog. We actually created https://startablog.com to drive this point home, teach people how to do it and even have a team that will do it for you for free if you need the help (lots of people still find the WP install process intimidating).

When would one choose WP over a static site generator? I just want to publish. I don't want to host something that needs patching and sysadmin and all that.

I can't speak for or against WordPress in specific but there is often a need for patching even if you somehow had mythical bug free code and keep things simple there may be compatability with say IPv6 to maintain or what was good enough for the day may now be a sick joke like relying on passwords for cryptographic security.

Re: 'Expert Twitter' Only Goes So Far – Bring Back Blogs

#22

Post by Alex3917 »

joelrunyon wrote: post #13

I've been on this train for a long, long time. If you don't own your platform, you don't own your content. Register your domain, install wordpress, start your own blog. We actually created https://startablog.com to drive this point home, teach people how to do it and even have a team that will do it for you for free if you need the help (lots of people still find the WP install process intimidating).

> If you don't own your platform, you don't own your content.

Not entirely true. You can generate nicely formatted content using a centralized service, and then self-host the files it outputs. E.g. we support this with FWD:Everyone, folks are free to use our tool to format any email thread for publication on the web, and then self-host published threads elsewhere by just saving our API responses.

IMHO this is a much better deal for folks than either hosting Wordpress, using a simple static site generator, or using a purely centralized service. You always get the latest tech that we’re investing in, but also the freedom to go nuts and do whatever.

Re: 'Expert Twitter' Only Goes So Far – Bring Back Blogs

#23

Post by jedimastert »

imglorp wrote: post #17
joelrunyon wrote: post #13

I've been on this train for a long, long time. If you don't own your platform, you don't own your content. Register your domain, install wordpress, start your own blog. We actually created https://startablog.com to drive this point home, teach people how to do it and even have a team that will do it for you for free if you need the help (lots of people still find the WP install process intimidating).

When would one choose WP over a static site generator? I just want to publish. I don't want to host something that needs patching and sysadmin and all that.

> I don't want to host something that needs patching and sysadmin and all that.

You mean like running your own webserver? Why would I do that instead of just getting a web host that'll take care of all of the sysadmin for you?

With a lot of web hosting platforms all you'll need is to just press a button on a web site, then all you'll have to deal with is the wordpress interface

Re: 'Expert Twitter' Only Goes So Far – Bring Back Blogs

#24

Post by notacoward »

The obstacle is not the format but the ease of sharing. Yes, I've had a blog since ~2000, I know there are some ways to share others' content on your own blog, but it never became as easy or readily consumable as a retweet.

Ironically, I think the reason is recognizable from epidemiology. The network of twitter followers is just denser than the network of bloggers ever was or likely ever will be. Even the very best blog posts still tended not to spread even an order of magnitude as well as a good tweet thread. As much as I hate the format, I don't think blogs can or will displace it.

Re: 'Expert Twitter' Only Goes So Far – Bring Back Blogs

#26

Post by badwolf »

imglorp wrote: post #17
joelrunyon wrote: post #13

I've been on this train for a long, long time. If you don't own your platform, you don't own your content. Register your domain, install wordpress, start your own blog. We actually created https://startablog.com to drive this point home, teach people how to do it and even have a team that will do it for you for free if you need the help (lots of people still find the WP install process intimidating).

When would one choose WP over a static site generator? I just want to publish. I don't want to host something that needs patching and sysadmin and all that.

While not the easiest thing (it could be made easier though) I run a Wordpress instance in a local VM, that then publishes static to S3. Works pretty swell.

Re: 'Expert Twitter' Only Goes So Far – Bring Back Blogs

#27

Post by nullc »

The infinite scroll addiction pipeline has segmented the online world largely into two parts: Drooling scroll zombies on twitter/facebook/reddit/etc, and people who don't partake at all.

The audience of people who might read your blog but who aren't stuck on a scroll treadmill is too small to bother, especially with the death of many popular rss readers.

Re: 'Expert Twitter' Only Goes So Far – Bring Back Blogs

#28

Post by twic »

yuyangchee98 wrote: post #5
pgt wrote: post #4

If you are an expert reading this considering writing a blog - whatever you do, please don't start publishing on a paywalled medium like Medium.

What alternatives do you recommend? I'm starting to write, and Medium seems like the best option to me because how else am I going to get readers?

How does Medium get you readers?

This is a genuine question - i only know Medium from the reader's side, where it is something that makes me about 20% less likely to read your writing!

Re: 'Expert Twitter' Only Goes So Far – Bring Back Blogs

#29

Post by andy_ppp »

Medium had such a great stab at doing this before they completely lost their way. I think someone should make another attempt at this, there doesn’t need to be a billion dollar company here to still get very rich and, more importantly, make something people want...

Re: 'Expert Twitter' Only Goes So Far – Bring Back Blogs

#30

Post by asdfadfaf »

No one has mentioned substack (https://substack.com/) yet. It's a product that seems to be on the right track. More generally I think getting a newsletter from a trusted source is a much better way to be informed than Twitter threads because Twitter in general encourages a weird mind-meld type of narratives where everyone just talks about the same thing 24/7 because everyone is liking, retweeting, and thinking about the same set of ideas in 280 character chunks.
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