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If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs

tttthis.com

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Re: If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs

#321

Post by zwaps »

aazaa wrote: post #178

The best way to bring back blogs is to start with your own. It looks like this is the author's fourth post and s/he hit a home run with the top post on HN. But that's rarely how things work. The thing few people tell you when you start blogging is how futile it will seem - for a long, long time. You'll start by posting something you put a lot of work into. You'll publish, thinking of all the comments and emails you'l…

I once wrote up something that interested me at the moment and figured I'll post it on medium so people get to actually read it.

To my surprise, medium doesn't let you publish (write yes, not publish) anything, unless you jump through several obscure loops like "engaging with the platform for a while".

My article wasn't particularly important, so I am not too heartbroken about it. But what this tells me is that there seems to be a lot of demand for publishing posts of different nature.

Re: If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs

#322

Post by nickdothutton »

Unfortunately blogs are missing a strong feedback loop. If RSS was the notification mechanism, then what was it that closed the loop so the blogger got great info on what was being read, liked, disliked? Chen gets this right here: https://andrewchen.co/the-death-of-rss-in-a-single-graph/

The internet is full of people with incredible ideas, many of which are writing them down, but the problem is discovery. How to connect them. If you can unify blogs with a feedback mechanism, with the immediacy of social media then that would be progress.

Unfortunately most mechanisms for discovery are hopelessly low SnR or totally contaminated with advertising or articles gaming some search algorithm. Funnily enough I write a little about it here within the context of one platform which could have been good, but wasn’t. https://blog.eutopian.io/building-a-better-linkedin/

Re: If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs

#323

Post by noizejoy »

zhdc1 wrote: post #72
dewey wrote: post #32

Blogs are still there, just not easily findable through Google as most of the ones you find are low-value SEO blogs aiming at search engine traffic. Discovery is a problem but I just subscribe to blogs when I find them via RSS (Blogs still have RSS, it's hard to find one without which is surprising but I'm glad that's the case), over time I build up my list of blogs I like and they usually link to other blogs and the…

Blogs and forums stopped being a thing when Google flushed them out sometime between 2009-2012 (with the Panda update? I'm not an SEO guy so I wasn't really following it at the time). Anyway, it felt like a bunch of places went from having active communities to stagnating or dying outright overnight. People forget just how much general innovation was being driven by these sites - Styleforum and AskAndy for men's fash…

One forum that seems to have bucked many trends is for music software: kvraudio.com[0]

Started about 20 years ago, It’s totally vibrant, despite an old school UI. Some threads keep going for years.

Sure, the signal to noise ratio isn’t always perfect either, but there’s still a continuing flow of golden nuggets of deeper industry information, helpful howto answers, and thoughtful commentary and feedback around music software.

In some ways it’s a little like HN, but in some ways I find it superior, like baked in notifications and being able to mute those that are too annoying. It probably helps that it’s adjunct to arguably the best music software directory, with imperfect, yet useful taxonomy, and old school advertising that’s highly relevant to the community.

[0] https://www.kvraudio.com/about-kvr

Re: If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs

#324

Post by madacoo »

tapia wrote: post #234
polishdude20 wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I often notice when I start writing on a particular topic, I learn more about my thoughts and opinions of it and realize my thoughts are wrong or not really novel. Halfway in I give up since I feel like, "oh, this actually isn't really adding anything new to the conversation". Then I leave with a new humbleness about my beliefs but also a sense of "when am I actually going to know enough to warrant writing about it?"…

That happens to me too. You really thing you have something interesting to tell, and then bam, just a silly thought... good that I realized that before publishing it.

I'm curious what your silly thoughts are. How do you know that I will share your judgement of what a silly thought is? What is a silly thought to you after writing something down might be of interest to a random internet user. Is it not presumptive to assume that everyone else will share your judgement?

Re: If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs

#325

Post by stOneskull »

jwmerrill wrote: post #113

Everyone should consider making their own blog! Kind of like everyone should consider baking their own bread, at least once. Having a blog that I built that is truly “mine,” with a domain name that I own, is one of the most rewarding things I’ve done. Even though I don’t write that often and don’t have that many readers. I currently host it on github pages, but I could move it somewhere else in a weekend if I wanted…

I think MySpace should've focused on the blog, and kept the feel of having 'my space'. I think it could have thrived. It would've been better than whatever it is now anyway, some crappy pop music ghost town thing.

Re: If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs

#326

Post by D13Fd »

ALittleLight wrote: post #277
jotm wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blogs haven't gone anywhere, now they're just "posts" on major platforms. That's what people chose, because it's easier. They gave up content rights and many, many possibilities for the ease of posting and the near instant views and feedback.

I was thinking about this the other day - trying to come up with an idea for a way to aggregate or recommend blogs to people based on what they'd previously enjoyed or the topics they were interested in. It took me several minutes to realize I was mentally describing Medium to myself. Still, something doesn't feel quite right about Medium to me.

I missed the Medium boat and just looked into it for the first time maybe 6 months ago.

From a reader’s perspective, the content just seems repetitive and traffic-driven. There is a certain sensationalist slant that must drive views, and the articles rapidly started to feel samey.

I’m still subscribed to it but I doubt I’ll renew.

Re: If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs

#327

Post by quickthrower2 »

slightwinder wrote: post #304
barrkel wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit is almost unreadable now, though. You have to click and click and click to expand things, and be careful not to click on the wrong thing which will take you to a different topic. I much, much, much prefer Reddit when it was more like HN, back when HN was modelled after Reddit & Digg. Today, any time I see a Reddit link, I exit immediately after I've gotten whatever information I require - and even that is rare…

old.reddit.com still works.

i.reddit.com is old and mobile friendly

Re: If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs

#328

Post by tayo42 »

GordonS wrote: post #231
thereyougo wrote: post #31

The problem as I see it is the Google algorithm. It force content creators to write it in a certain way that in many cases might be way too long and not ’to the point’. I dont remember the last time I searched for something on Google and it showed me a high quality opinion article in a random blog. nowadays everything is around SEO and blogs, as much as I understand why google does that, I think it's the main reason…

Food blogs are the perfect example of this. Instead of an introduction and a recipe, you get a massive wall of text, such that you have to scroll for what seems like an eternity until you get to the actual recipe. Drives me nuts!

Recipes aren't good either. I noticed good sites like serious eats almost never come up. The same sites always come up, nytimes, all recipes, food.com.

I guess search engines aren't the best place to get recipes, you need someone to vet and review them.

Actually.. that might be an interesting thing to do heh

Re: If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs

#329

Post by dang »

jph00 wrote: post #205
neonate wrote: post #38

https://web.archive.org/web/20200516183004/http://tttthis.co...

The OP link should probably be changed to: http://tttthis.com/blog/if-i-could-bring-one-thing-back-to-t... Currently it's linking to the "edit" page.

Changed from http://tttthis.com/edit/blog/if-i-could-bring-one-thing-back.... Thanks!

Re: If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs

#330

Post by passthejoe »

arkanciscan wrote: post #240

No mention of Twitter, Facebook or Instagram? It seems obvious to me that that is where the blogs went. People don't create content so that people they don't know have something to do in their spare time, they do it for the recognition, and social acceptance. In other words; they do it for the likes. The blogs dried up because the audience's attention coalesced on the few sites and apps that people used the most. Blo…

> they do it for the likes

That's it.

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