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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)

#211

Post by ipaddr »

dsr_ wrote: post #136
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 way to find good blogs is to start by asking technical questions in whatever subject you are interested in. If you want to read about barbeque, you need to start with a technical question about barbeque; if you want to read about Greek history, you need a question about that. Eventually you will find somebody knowledgeable who is writing about that subject. They will in turn link to others, or comment on others,…

There are specific content bloggers and life bloggers. Someone may have a great bbq post but the blog is filled with other subjects. The people who write only about bbq usually are part of a sales funnel process.

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

#212

Post by schemescape »

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 wish there was some way to "undo" my contribution to a site's advertising revenue when I start reading and discover the page is just SEO garbage (e.g. when I see a sentence that starts with "many reviewers noted that ...").

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

#213

Post by hbn »

fsflover wrote: post #2

Blogs are still there. Try search engines which discourage cluttered web design to find them: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28550764 and https://wiby.me/

Wiby has been my new tab page for a few months now. Occasionally if I'm bored, i'll hit the "surprise me" button and dig into some weird obscure web page on a very specific topic. You can find some neat stuff!

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

#214

Post by paulpauper »

Substack is the new blog. The problem most bloggers face is no traffic and readers. The failure rate is so high, I can understand why the medium overall has declined in popularity. I think videos and podcasts are easier to get traction and there is more money.

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

#215

Post by derekzhouzhen »

tarkin2 wrote: post #47

There's medium. But medium is a horrible mess. There's Dev.to which is at least usable and something I will visit. There's a couple of problems with blogs. - Sometimes I only want to subscribe to an author's certain topics - There's still no good RSS reader; I use feedly, but its load-time puts me off it big time (I've tried plenty of others) - The tendency to sign up for walled garden platforms rather than platforms…

> There's still no good RSS reader; I use feedly, but its load-time puts me off it big time (I've tried plenty of others)

If you want a fast, in browser RSS reader I don't think anything can beat mine in load time: https://airss.roastidio.us

I recently have a show HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28585353

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

#216

Post by shadowgovt »

PaulHoule wrote: post #210
shadowgovt wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm working on a hypothesis that there is something I call the "AM radio effect," which, roughly speaking, is "As communication technologies progress in comfort and convenience, the older generation will become dominated by hucksters who try to take advantage of those who cannot or will not switch." It's my explanation for - what happened to AM radio as FM, satellite, and podcasting came to dominate the American driv…

What happened to landlines? What I witness was that innovation stopped. For instance landlines could have been upgraded to support text messaging (just as they use a modem to send caller ID they could use a modem to send and receive texts.) Cordless phones, answering machines and such could have all gotten better but they didn't. Most irksome, landlines don't support deliverability features such as STIR/SHAKEN so if…

> What happened to landlines

The majority of incoming calls on landlines now are people trying to scam the callee. [https://www.inc.com/bill-murphy-jr/almost-half-your-phone-ca...]. And the majority of AM radio content now is low-audience long-tail content (or mass-commodified syndicated content, like Rush Limbaugh) that is a medium for pushing low-quality bulk advertising for questionable products.

To expand upon the hypothesis (and this is half-baked and incomplete, so take it with several grains of salt): as technology evolves, people move to more comfortable / more convenient technology. AM is not comfortable or convenient; it's interfered with by too many EM flux sources in the modern world. Landline is not comfortable or convenient for the reasons you noted relative to modern alternatives.

The people who do not move off these technologies are various flavors of captive audiences: people who can't buy FM radios or don't want to adopt new stations / find content in new locations, people who can't use a cellphone, etc. As mainstream content creation leaves these channels, the vacuum is taken over by hucksters trying to take advantage of these captive audiences. The incentives to do so are lack of alternative content and a "softer" target audience (easier to fool, especially since these technologies were once mainstream and trusted so many of their users still believe they are, even after the hucksters have taken them over). I have relatives who still believe "They wouldn't call me if they didn't have business with me; how would they know my number?" And I still have relatives who believe AM news radio is news.

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

#217

Post by schemescape »

My biggest motivation for starting an independent blog instead of posting on Facebook, LinkedIn, Medium, etc. is that I want to have possession of the content that I create.

Even if it's possible to get data back out of the big platforms, I wouldn't be surprised if it's in some proprietary format that is difficult to later reuse.

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

#218

Post by Nextgrid »

schemescape wrote: post #212
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 wish there was some way to "undo" my contribution to a site's advertising revenue when I start reading and discover the page is just SEO garbage (e.g. when I see a sentence that starts with "many reviewers noted that ...").

This is a “feature”. There’s so much content out there whose sole purpose is to drive advertising revenue, either with complicity of the brand being advertised or incidentally (as targeting is never 100% reliable, there’s always a bit of “leakage” where an ad would be displayed next to irrelevant or content that the advertiser would normally object to - at scale that leakage is money someone can capitalise on).

A lot of people rightfully mention that we lack a proper micropayments system for the web and while that’s true, I don’t think it’s the only problem. A lot of people’s careers and companies are built on this parasitic model where they don’t actually provide any tangible value and only profit off leftover scraps, which wouldn’t be sustainable in a completely paid-for model because the end-user doesn’t actually get any value out of it and thus would never willingly pay money for this “service”.

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

#219

Post by coldpie »

schemescape wrote: post #212
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 wish there was some way to "undo" my contribution to a site's advertising revenue when I start reading and discover the page is just SEO garbage (e.g. when I see a sentence that starts with "many reviewers noted that ...").

Install an ad blocker and use direct payment to fund ethical business models.

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

#220

Post by distances »

BlueTemplar wrote: post #206
distances wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Hmm, how do you deal with unknown numbers ? I never answer those on the first go - only if they left a voicemail or a text message...

I live in Germany and for whatever reason I have literally never received a spam call here. I can go months without receiving a single call these days. I'm not exactly sure if spam calls are not a thing here or if I've just been lucky. But yeah I see how that can lead to different preferences when it comes to voice mail.
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