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

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511–520 of 637 posts

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

#511

> The other day I searched for an hour and couldn't find even one. They used to be endless. Oh there are still endless blogs. There are definitely a lot of defunct ones - but many have become active again recently. I review the unknown ones I come across here: https://www.kickscondor.com/hrefhunt/ (I skip software and startup blogs, because they are so numerous.) You just can’t use the old avenues (Google searches, c…

HrefHunt is awesome! Thank you. Crawling through it for my spartan collection: https://old.reddit.com/r/SpartanWeb/

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

#512
I think a lot of this type of writing shifted to Twitter and Instagram, but I agree this microblogging is not the same... it lacks the immersiveness of a good long story.

On the other hand it has never been easier to set up your own blog with services like Netlify, Jekyll, Pelican etc.

I recently started my own blog in this way, however it requires some coding skills... I know it’s a shameless plug, but here it is: https://haltakov.net/blog

To not be too selfish, let me also share one of my favorite blogs of a guy telling amazing stories about his hikes and adventures (unfortunately, he hasn’t written in a while): https://www.otherhand.org

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

#513

If I could bring one thing back it would be just plain old _websites_, when people would make a place on the internet dedicated to some topic that was organized in a way _other than_ chronological order, and just became a great resource where important information was always easy to surface. Here's a great example that will probably trigger some nostalgia for anyone who grew up on the late 90s internet: http://www.pe…

I was just looking for good academic websites in my field, and I found that for the most part, they're gone. They still exist, especially Google sites. It's just that they're purely for promotion. Almost entirely things an employer would look for. 20 years ago, you'd have academics putting material on their websites to provide information to others.

Where do academics put their material nowadays?

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

#514
post #476
post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Posterous: I just launched https://flipso.com — Does more or less the same.

Is there a sample post that we can see?

https://flipso.com/p/dBrEHmXHXEpWpqdYpn2L [Still rough but you get the idea]

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

#515

This article makes... no sense to me. Blogs are still around, everywhere, and show up easily in search results if a post matches a relevant query. And bloggers still list other blogs in sidebars. I genuinely don't understand the author's complaint. The only thing I can imagine is that there are a lot more alternatives for self-expression on the internet now, e.g. Instagram, Twitter, podcasts, etc. So blogs are perhap…

Essentially the author is longing for a day before social media existed, but the world has changed fast - and that's ok. The medium has diversified away from just blogs, but the amount mediums and creators has exploded. Many of those people who used to blog on Blogspot have moved on to YouTube, TikTok Twitter, Instagram, Medium, WordPress, Shopify, Webflow, and more. So the whole premise is bunk. "Blogs" in their 200…

Part of it is where the eyeballs are, and part of it is what the content creators are using.

Blogs were written and read on computers. Now people consume, and increasingly produce, on phones. Hence blogs (long-form text) -> social media (short-form text) -> vlogs (long-form video) -> tiktok (short-form video)

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

#516
Issue is that different "agents" ruined blogging: war of misinformation, politics, fake news, conspiracy theories, corporate advertisement fake stories, quick money earning scheme, phishing sites, AI created pages, etc.

Nowadays, there is so many of above that simply finding meaningful read is really hard work. I guess we are race of attention seekers (money and fame), some of them justifiably as they have really new inspiring ideas, other not so much. One Flappy Bird and gazillion clones. Issue is in global world with 5 billion connected, top of the pyramid is very limited space. And to get into that space is very, very hard.

Anonymity never worked, as because of shared data across cookies and huge number of cross referencing vectors, it is easy do identify any person. GDPR does not help much. So, do I agree of anonymity no, maybe for a change everything should be transparent, if you have crazy idea, and you wish to say, because you broadcasting to wide population then you have to be prepared to face consequences. Also if people would bully writer because of what s/he said they should post their comments only as identifiable personas.

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

#517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> used against you in job interviews I used to think blogging come as complementary to your skills. How will anyone use them against you?

Well, it depends on what you blog about. If, say, you blog about some social/economic/political position that is (or becomes) unpopular/unacceptable, your career may be toast. Such as, for example, happened for James Damore. So if you're going to blog as your meatspace identity, you gotta protect your brand. If you want to blog carelessly, you'd better do that using a persona that can't readily be linked to your meat…

It's sad, but that's the reality of things in our "politically correct" modern world.

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

#518
post #199
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…

Those blogs from the time before were written for the purpose of writing, not for the purpose of getting lots of viewership. The blogs the author misses aren't written to make money off of ad traffic, they were just written to put down ideas. Today that need is filled with Facebook/Twitter/... and even there with the currency of likes/comments those motivations get twisted. Some of the internet has also shifted to a…

I blog about my electronics project. It's public in that it's online and accessible but it is for me, both to ensure I think things through well enough to write them down coherently and to have a reference for decisions.

I blog my work activities on an internal wiki for similar reasons. Major decisions need to be gathered in project documentation but small decisions and daily challenges are good to have written down.

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

#519
post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it depends on what you blog about. If, say, you blog about some social/economic/political position that is (or becomes) unpopular/unacceptable, your career may be toast. Such as, for example, happened for James Damore. So if you're going to blog as your meatspace identity, you gotta protect your brand. If you want to blog carelessly, you'd better do that using a persona that can't readily be linked to your meat…

It's sad, but that's the reality of things in our "politically correct" modern world.

When are you thinking it was better?
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