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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)

#221

Post by brabel »

rchaud wrote: post #169
brabel wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would I use this instead of my own domain and a website hosted for free on Netlify or GitHub Pages? I can get quite a lot of views by posting my latest posts to the relevant forums (HN, Reddit, programming forums)... if there's any advantage I am not seeing, I actually do want to know.

You'd go to Substack if the endgame was to develop a paying audience. Views alone don't pay writers' bills.

Ah ok, but when I talk about blogging in the sense we're talking here, I think of it mostly as a non-professional activity as it used to be... just people sharing their thoughts/knowledge.

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

#222

Post by pixelgeek »

rchaud wrote: post #157

Here are the "blogs" I've discovered recently: 1) Random side hustle site about making weekend planners and selling via Kindle Direct Publishing. Found on a search for "Affinity Publisher 5x8 template" 2) Website Builder Report: A site that does "reviews" of website builders, e.g. Squarespace and has a convenient coupon code for each site being reviewed. Found on a search for "static file CMS" 3) Plausible Analytics,…

> Seems like people aren't interested in writing words on the Internet unless they expect to get paid from it somehow.

Google dramatically changed how content was found and also how much there was. Since Google has a effective stranglehold on online advertising they have become the effective "tastemaker" for the internet. If Google thinks it is popular then people write SEO focused content on that subject and that is what shows up when you search since those sites also host Google ads.

Search engines are also not very good. The model that made sense for the pre-Google internet doesn't really produce meaningful result anymore

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

#223

Post by grifball »

coliveira wrote: post #119
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…

You misunderstand blogs: you can find the good ones only by personal referral or by actively trying. If you have to search Google, then you'll, by definition, find only the ones that are optimizing for search engines. There is no way to solve this problem, and I think the same is true for other forms of social interaction.

Can you recommend a good blog then?

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

#224

Post by buildsjets »

orndorffgrant wrote: post #143
veidr wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You should tell your old school friend that their voicemail is full. At least with my carrier, I can only have like ~20 voicemails sitting around. I listen to every voicemail I get but my voicemail inbox filled up and I didn't realize it was full for years (there was no notification or anything). To make space I had to actively go delete voicemails. Of course, deleting them just sent them to a "deleted" folder, which…

You should realize that some people intentionally allow or cause their voicemail to fill so that callers can't leave additional messages.

I certainly do. I have no intention of EVER checking my voicemail, so why would I want to leave callers with a false impression that their message will be heard?

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

#226

Post by rfrey »

erklik wrote: post #83
lonk11 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discovery of good sources of information such as blogs is hard. And I think the biggest problem is the lack of trust. Everyone wants to grab your attention [1]. So how do you know that others won't waste your attention? To solve this problem I am building https://linklonk.com that cultivates trust as you rate content. When you upvote a link you connect stronger to the feed that posted it (which could be a blog's feed…

> Discovery of good sources of information such as blogs is hard. And I think the biggest problem is the lack of trust. Everyone wants to grab your attention [1]. So how do you know that others won't waste your attention? > To solve this problem I am building https://linklonk.com that cultivates trust as you rate content. When you upvote a link you connect stronger to the feed that posted it (which could be a blog's…

Alternative framing: Solution to someone's problem is to propose a tool one has built that helps fix it.

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

#227

Post by sourcecodeplz »

mikewarot wrote: post #195

A lot of the bloggers I read back in the day would now be called influencers, and the attention they fed on moved to other platforms, like Facebook, etc. Writing a good blog post takes time and effort, and what's the point if nobody is going to be around to read it? We all need that dopamine hit to keep putting in the effort, don't we? >But Blogger was shut down by Google years ago, That was a shock to read, as I las…

Blogger is so underrated ... great platform. In my opinion the most valuable free service from Google after Search.

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

#228

Post by pixelgeek »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #138

I went self-hosted about a year ago (again) using ghost and commento. So far I love it. I've been writing online since the first web pages and I started blogging around 2000 or so. (I think) The demise of blogging and the crap that is social media are both due to the same combination of two factors: zero friction to create content and instantaneous, perhaps wordwide feedback on whatever you create. Serious writing ju…

> The demise of blogging and the crap that is social media are both due to the same combination of two factors: zero friction to create content and instantaneous, perhaps wordwide feedback on whatever you create. Serious writing just isn't designed to work in this kind of world. You'll be drowned out by emotionally-manipulative crap and then people will build engines to churn out even more crap faster that's even more manipulative.

I spent the better part of a half hour trying to find a blog post a read about a month ago that talked about this very thing. It was one of the reasons why I stopped writing my old blog and moved to one where I effectively ramble on for my own amusement.

I think that this is one of the biggest changes in the web in some time. Content is being produced for search engine placement and social media aggregation. Once someone hits a site and the ad loads the content has done its work. The author of the piece doesn't care if you found it interesting or informative. That is irrelevant. They got your click.

Facebook and Google exacerbate this issue by owning the ad services that these sites use. It is a closed system that just feeds on itself.

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

#229

Post by fsckboy »

blogs were the beginning of the death of the internet: content based around a person is basically celebrity culture, and the pressure is on to crank something out regardless of whether the celeb has anything to say.

the slashdot/digg/reddit/hn model is better (though as a microcosm of blogging, the slashdot editors were too personality driven as well)

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

#230

Post by thepasswordis »

maskros wrote: post #161
dsr_ wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

Discussion groups and forums used to be useful, but now they're dying out and being replaced by undiscoverable walled garden facebook groups and discord servers...

And what's frustrating is that you can't even search those facebook groups (AFAIK).
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