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

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

#391

Post by jiofih »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #262

> but when you look there's nothing to read I don't get it. When was the last time you looked? There's more good stuff to read online than you could ever read. There are probably even more blogs than ever before, blogs just don't have the same slice of the pie that they once did. Seems like when people complain there's nothing good to watch anymore. I suspect that they are so accustomed to having so much material to…

I suspect you’re below 30 years of age? It’s quite interesting how quickly the memory of the internet has faded and this became the new normal. Sometimes it pays to look a little deeper.

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

#392

Post by meerita »

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…

Exactly. As a 20 years blogger, I would say I wish people posted more blog posts than shitty tuits. But Twitter format made possible distribute the message better than the blogs. Back then, we used RSS aggregators and other things, nowadays its kinda rare. I still visit blogs and i still post on my own blog, though i do it everytime i need to do a longer explanation post.

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

#393

Post by crazygringo »

xythobuz wrote: post #377
crazygringo wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not that I don't believe you, but that just hasn't been my experience with Google at all, and I use it extensively for research tracking down fairly obscure sources with presumably close-to-zero traffic by putting in quoted sentence fragments. Do you have an example of a website that is linked to from other sites (so Google can find it) where a quoted search for a unique sentence fragment from it doesn't list it as a…

This blog post [1] has at least two anecdotal examples. Also see the corresponding HN discussion [2]. [1]: http://stop.zona-m.net/2018/01/indeed-it-seems-that-google-i... [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19604135

Ah yes I remember that one, thanks for finding that.

Giving the article and comments a quick-rebrowse, it honestly seems extremely circumstantial -- that they're mostly explainable due to content moving, URL's without any links pointing to them, etc. -- generally stuff that can be identified and fixed in Search Console for your site.

It hardly looks like any confirmable trend or policy, not even remotely. Just Google doing its best to rank the most useful search results with the heuristics it has, but not excluding anything it's able to find. And jumping to the conclusion that any de-ranking has to do with age is pure speculation.

So unfortunately I just don't see any real evidence to support the up-comment assertion that Google delists content due to its age. And again, it flies in the face of its business model which is to return useful results so it can show advertising next to them. There's no plausible business motive here.

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

#395

Post by AndrewStephens »

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…

I just want to say that I like your nitmyhostname blog and enjoyed your article on RSS.

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

#399

Post by stevenicr »

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 have some blogs that played the long game, and I must say the years thing is a fantasy for most that will likely not be realized. Sure it's fine to do like art that could get popular after you die, or you could be found as an unknown amazing author on day..

However things with the publishing and PR industry are such that I think it would be best to get some eyeballs and feedback before you spend years writing hoping to get discovered, much like launching a product or service too late after spending too much time in pre-production.

Sadly I think it's multiple changes in google that killed blogs over the years and I don't see blogs coming back into the top search results (or blog link rolls not being penalties that scare people into never using them) and changing things.

I love blogs, and blogging - but I must admit that more success is found by tweeting or even making a meme that is shared. If you can't hope for google to give you results and never know if fbook is going to block your blog, then I don't suggest people put eggs in that basket - unless there is another side reason for doing so, like your posts are auto-added to instagram or something somehow.

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

#400

Post by cauliflower2718 »

carapace wrote: post #348
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's awesome! If only most people would do that, I think the internet would be a much more entertaining and enlightening place. Here's the thing: write that. Go meta, just a little, and write about your journey. "I thought this, but then I found out that, and now my questions have evolved thus..." I think it was Orson Welles who, when somebody asked him if they could write his biography, said, "No, because it will…

It also seems likely that that idea is also not novel, so that the previous poster wouldn't want to blog publicly about it.
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