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If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs (2020)

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Re: If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs (2020)

#171

Post by wibagusto »

d3nj4l wrote: post #56

As a minor counterpoint: I've come to dread blogs and newsletters because so many of them are written by grind culture freaks who only write faux-insightful SEO'd content as a way to build an audience to sell snake oil to. These days the only blogs I trust are the ones I see on the top of HN or lobsters, which is unfortunate because I have interests beyond tech and I find it very, very difficult to find good blogs I…

The problem with social media sites is their algorithms are focused on profitability. If you follow a local restaurant and then move to another city they will push ads and show content tied to your geolocation (which makes sense—not saying that’s bad per se). But they dictate what you should see and when.

With blogs it used to be about the RSS feed, which had one job: to nudge users when new content is available. But ultimately users (or news aggregators) had control over what the algorithm does.

The problem with blogs as pointed out is content discovery. How can content be discoverable without commercial interests? Social media platforms make content discovery simple and effective. On top of that, the barrier to entry is low—a two or three step on boarding process which is free (as in beer) to-boot.

Anyone know of good content-discovery platforms?

Podcasts are interesting because multiple platforms support them so they exist somewhat in the borderland. Might be an interesting case study being podcast discover ability vs blogs vs social media.

All that being said, I think we simply have to go beyond the first page of search engine results to find the good stuff. Not finding stuff is a form of laziness when we are used to getting a quick info-fix on Wikipedia. But standardized P2P protocols might be nice too—good incentive for a crypto currency?

Re: If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs (2020)

#173

Post by goatkey »

d3nj4l wrote: post #56

As a minor counterpoint: I've come to dread blogs and newsletters because so many of them are written by grind culture freaks who only write faux-insightful SEO'd content as a way to build an audience to sell snake oil to. These days the only blogs I trust are the ones I see on the top of HN or lobsters, which is unfortunate because I have interests beyond tech and I find it very, very difficult to find good blogs I…

I really enjoy The Browser[0] newsletter for this reason. They find very very good articles that often also end up on the front page of HN. I’ve found a lot of great new blogs / magazines this way. —- 0: https://thebrowser.com/

Re: If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs (2020)

#174

Post by FlyingSnake »

d3nj4l wrote: post #56

As a minor counterpoint: I've come to dread blogs and newsletters because so many of them are written by grind culture freaks who only write faux-insightful SEO'd content as a way to build an audience to sell snake oil to. These days the only blogs I trust are the ones I see on the top of HN or lobsters, which is unfortunate because I have interests beyond tech and I find it very, very difficult to find good blogs I…

“Most books should have been an article, most articles should’ve been a tweet.”

Blogging just for the sake of blogging is what caused their decline in the first place. If the blogpost can’t be easily understood within first few lines, it’s a wasted opportunity. The a reason Morgan House, Derek Sivers are still relevant.

Re: If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs (2020)

#175

Post by giansegato »

elliekelly wrote: post #87
giansegato wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which means - whether we like it or no - that social media were and are superior products when it comes to this specific use case, otherwise people won't be using it.

Inferior products prevail all the time. The free market is far from perfect. Especially when one product exploits negative externalities.

I don't think our average Carl will use a blog instead of Instagram to share his thoughts.

Yes, inferior products prevail from time to time, especially when those negative externalities you mention help consolidate a dominant position.

But social networks do not charge money. People are free to open as many blogs as they want. If they didn't when they were raging in the early 2000s there must a reason.

Reality is complex, especially human motivations. But to argue that blogs are a superior for the mainstream public to share themselves to an audience is a bit intellectually unfair.

Like... distribution?

Re: If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs (2020)

#176

Post by PragmaticPulp »

mabub24 wrote: post #66
d3nj4l wrote: post #56

As a minor counterpoint: I've come to dread blogs and newsletters because so many of them are written by grind culture freaks who only write faux-insightful SEO'd content as a way to build an audience to sell snake oil to. These days the only blogs I trust are the ones I see on the top of HN or lobsters, which is unfortunate because I have interests beyond tech and I find it very, very difficult to find good blogs I…

> I've come to dread blogs and newsletters because so many of them are written by grind culture freaks who only write faux-insightful SEO'd content as a way to build an audience to sell snake oil to. My way around that is to pay. I find paid newsletters/blogs tend to evade SEO crap, for good reason: no one actually likes writing or reading that shit. Also, usually by forgoing the SEO crap they can focus on niche topi…

I’ve found the opposite: Switching to a paid/subscription model has ruined some of the writers I previously enjoyed.

When they wrote for fun, not profit, the writings came out whenever they had something interesting enough to share. Now that it’s for-profit, the content is forced to come out faster and more frequently with posts that feel unnecessarily long to justify the cost. One author I previously enjoyed for well-researched topics that debunked popular opinions has been firing off un-researched posts with claims that can be debunked in 30 seconds of Googling.

The topics feel like they’re being chosen to produce the most interesting teaser (to convince non-subscribers to subscribe) or SEO juice. It feels like the clickbait factor went way up overnight.

Much of the magic of the past blogging era was that people were writing because they wanted to, not because they were fishing for clicks or subscriptions or pandering to future employers with every word. The move to paid takes some of that away.

Re: If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs (2020)

#177

Post by floatingatoll »

veidr wrote: post #25

Yeah blogs are still here, BUT: (like email ( sob ) and telephone-calling (hooray)) a lot of people that once did blog don't anymore. Not in the "I had kids so my blog went dark for a few years" sense, but in the sense of "ooh twitter was invented and now I just emit a halfassed one-sentence brainfart or 5-second tiktok cellphone video and get way more dopamine hits". I've been reading blogs and perusing my self-cura…

Blogs were never mainstream when they were a healthy ecosystem. Before search engines, the only real way to find new blogs was to follow links from other blogs — either people talking near each other, or webrings, or whatever. This was swell, and served as essentially a perfect defense against outside abuse. If we'd kept that model then we wouldn't really have trouble with spammers and scammers.

Google downloaded all that curation effort and then claimed we didn't have to do it anymore, and that we just need to "be indexed", but that opens the door for spammers and scammers, and there's no fix for it. Without curation, blogs are no better than strangers on a street corner.

I think the only way to restore the health of the blog ecosystem is to go back to webrings, except with an RSS accumulator added^, so that we can follow everyone in a webring and report abuse to the webring curators.

^ OPML subscriptions would be a workable model, except that many feed readers only support "import OPML one-time", not "poll and refresh".

EDIT: It isn't sufficient to implement RSS or OPML support. The missing piece is webrings that curate their membership lists, with a human sanity limit of 25 or 50 sites per webring. That was a real limit back in the day, but it's still worth keeping to keep humans honest. You can't replace this effort with technology, but you can support it. We just choose not to, because search is lazy and somewhat effective, and so blogs suffer.

Re: If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs (2020)

#178

Post by tharne »

elliekelly wrote: post #87
giansegato wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which means - whether we like it or no - that social media were and are superior products when it comes to this specific use case, otherwise people won't be using it.

Inferior products prevail all the time. The free market is far from perfect. Especially when one product exploits negative externalities.

> Inferior products prevail all the time. The free market is far from perfect. Especially when one product exploits negative externalities.

Exhibit A being the QWERTY keyboard most of us are typing on right now.

Re: If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs (2020)

#179

Post by Jugurtha »

rchaud wrote: post #154
Jugurtha wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have installed a Chrome extension to remove certain "data science" blogs from my search results because they just dominate, but allow posts from practically anyone. I'm not interested in the teachings of a data virgin on machine learning. I have muted and blocked accounts on Twitter as well because of that: people clearly never having touched real data talking about ML projects, recommending libraries to manage lif…

The UX/UI area is just as bad. It's nearly impossible to find authoritative discussions outside of conference slide decks, which aren't ideal for reading as standalone documents, as they only have bullet points. However there is no shortage of useless "app redesign" case studies from complete amateurs. And it's always the same ones too: Starbucks, Netflix, Snapchat, Instagram and Spotify. How about a public health we…

It's one point I make whenever I get the chance to talk with students who ask me on how to work on portfolio to demonstrate skills. I tell them to try and solve a problem for real and make a product. They'll learn so much more than playing house. Databsases, the language, front-end, sales, getting users, killing hypotheses, product design, product management, prioritization, making tradeoffs, etc.

Re: If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs (2020)

#180

Post by distances »

veidr wrote: post #99
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I think is a need for some platform that provides blog+microblog on your domain, and that automatically forwards the content to social platforms so that you get the best of both worlds: 1 - owning your blog is too big of a barrier of entry, there is a need for a platform: look at the success at medium for tech writers, despite that we hate it. 2 - we need the return of the domain name based blog. This helps with…

I do think the ability to do phone calls is waning, though. I've made 4 phone calls this year: to a buddy, to my wife, to an old friend, and to my fax/voicemail provider (JConnect) which decided to terminate voicemail service on the phone number I've used since the 1990s. (So I may be part of the problem I am describing — that number didn't ring any device, it only accepted voice messages and faxes, which it forwarde…

I agree that phone calls are waning, but I don't personally see the connection to voice mails. I never liked the concept so I've never left a voice mail, nor have I ever enabled it for myself. In my opinion voice calls can only get better if answering machines and voice mails die out.
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