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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

#491

Post by larsrc »

Reelin wrote: post #379
throwaway1777 wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Start an anonymous blog. I have one. Also an anonymous hacker news account. :)

The trouble with that is that once you post something to it you can never associate it with yourself (even accidentally!) or deanonymization of everything else posted by that identity will also occur. Half baked idea: A decentralized and properly anonymized (at the protocol level) service intended for long-form articles. Employ cryptographic primitives to allow association of a single article with one or more identit…

"Hi! It looks like you're trying to solve complex social problems with technology. Would you like some help in your futile endeavour?"

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

#492

Post by tdeck »

robot wrote: post #488
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…

this is true, though with the assumption of blogging as it is in today's world where it is lonely and only a search engine can find you. if blogging was done inside a supportive community and network it could be less lonely and you could get frequent feedback and interactions. If I was to make an analogy using your perspective on blogging with facebook or instagram - you post about yourself or post personal photos fo…

You appear to be describing Medium in the latter half of your post, which seems to have gone through multiple business models at this point.

As for a network and aggregation, back in the day there were decentralized solutions. We had RSS and pingbacks and Google News, which in the early days was largely a blog search engine. There were things like Reddit and StumbleUpon for finding new blogs, in addition to slashdot and Hacker News. Many of these sites have changed in terms of content since then, but originally a lot of what they linked to was blogs.

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

#493

Post by larsrc »

tunesmith wrote: post #446
rland wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, this is why I don’t have a blog. I have a lot of strong opinions that might be interesting to some people, but I don’t want to miss opportunities because some HR person googled my name and found a post they disagreed with. Or, in the future, not a real person but an algorithm.

It'd be nice if robots.txt were actually respected so that your blog was visible to people you trackback, or from blogs that link to you, but not to search engines.

I find most of my blog entries using search engines. And I suspect I'm not alone in this. Blocking search engines gives you a serious bootstrap problem.

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

#494

Post by mumbojumbo85 »

cyberferret wrote: post #357
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've been blogging on and off for the past few years now (not going to publish the link here in case it is seen as self promotion). Mainly as a way of leaving my life story and thoughts for my family to have something to remember my life when I am no longer around (My dad had some incredible life stories, and I wish we had recorded them in some form before he passed). I think what is missing now is the rich set of to…

I gave my father a journal for the entire family to share, pass around, and make notes in when he turned 50. With the idea if our grandfather had used such a tool how cool it would be.

It’s hard getting the ideas down, but having lived long enough to lost a few email accounts from My childhood, and other such content.

When you want to preserve for future generations I think there’s really something to be said for paper. I think Nassim Taleb had ideas about papers longevity too, the longer a technology had been around the longer it will likely stay around. As in email will likely outside Facebook simply because it’s already been around longer.

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

#495

Post by sturza »

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.

Can we talk privately about this?

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

#496

Post by Reelin »

larsrc wrote: post #491
Reelin wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trouble with that is that once you post something to it you can never associate it with yourself (even accidentally!) or deanonymization of everything else posted by that identity will also occur. Half baked idea: A decentralized and properly anonymized (at the protocol level) service intended for long-form articles. Employ cryptographic primitives to allow association of a single article with one or more identit…

"Hi! It looks like you're trying to solve complex social problems with technology. Would you like some help in your futile endeavour?"

What complex social problem? All I see are a few technical problems regarding security, anonymity, and interrelations between nodes on a graph. There's also a closely related ease of use (ie UX) problem regarding the convenience (or rather lack thereof) of publishing things in a reasonably anonymous manner.

All the social problems, such as the underlying reasons for wanting or needing anonymity in the first place, remain.

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

#497

Post by robot »

tdeck wrote: post #492
robot wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is true, though with the assumption of blogging as it is in today's world where it is lonely and only a search engine can find you. if blogging was done inside a supportive community and network it could be less lonely and you could get frequent feedback and interactions. If I was to make an analogy using your perspective on blogging with facebook or instagram - you post about yourself or post personal photos fo…

You appear to be describing Medium in the latter half of your post, which seems to have gone through multiple business models at this point. As for a network and aggregation, back in the day there were decentralized solutions. We had RSS and pingbacks and Google News, which in the early days was largely a blog search engine. There were things like Reddit and StumbleUpon for finding new blogs, in addition to slashdot…

Thanks for the comment - Medium is aiming to help writers to monetize (IMO its not working) and not serving recreational bloggers. Yes there were all these mechanisms to find and interact with blogs. But don't you think they can be modernized, and centralized? RSS works, but how many people can use RSS? They just want to press a follow button.

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

#498

Post by Falkon1313 »

stevenicr wrote: post #399
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 hopin…

Maybe if you're only doing it for fame and fortune and PR and success. But trying to do that without actually having anything interesting to get famous and successful about was always just a con-man's game.

Real blogging is about sharing your thoughts and ideas on whatever niche topic interests you with people who have the same interests, and the conversations that arise out of that. Like the friendships that form from participating in BBSes and forums over the years, the value is in the fun you have and the interesting discussions and bouncing ideas off others' viewpoints. It doesn't need to be a business to be fulfilling.

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

#500

Post by topherPedersen »

People don't read blogs anymore, but they still read blog posts. Let me explain: In the past people may have visited certain blogs directly, or maybe they followed a blog through an RSS feed. Nowadays, a more likely scenario is someone google's something and a blog post on the topic pops up in their search results. That's where I find myself consuming blog posts. Likewise, all of the traffic for my blog comes from search engine traffic as well.
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