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The great blogging collapse: What happened to 100 successful blogs?

danielstanica.com

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Re: The great blogging collapse: What happened to 100 successful blogs?

#121

Post by bediger4000 »

bobthepanda wrote: post #109
bediger4000 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This appears to be true for a plurality, or maybe just barely a majority of people. I don't find audio so easily multi-tasks, unless we're using different definitions. My example: I find it very difficult to do something described in an audio or video format - rewire a light switch, say. I find it way easier to have text with a diagram. I can stop and check the text at any time. I find it easier to go back to previou…

When i say multitask I mean that more literally. If you’re driving you can’t read, if you’re a passenger on public transit audio won’t make you motion sick, if you are cooking or cleaning you can have it on in the background, etc. Reading requires the full use of your eyes, no way around that.

Fair enough - we have different definitions. If I have audio on while driving or cooking or cleaning, I can only half listen, I miss a lot. I have to be very careful with what I listen to while driving, lest it take my attention away from the road, so I only half agree with you.

Re: The great blogging collapse: What happened to 100 successful blogs?

#122

Post by smitty1e »

6510 wrote: post #110
economistbob wrote: post #94

Everyone removed their blogroll. That is what happened. Someone gave Automattic (WordPress foundation that could receive "donations" from advertising platforms) the idea that making blogs mostly discoverable via paid advertising was a good idea. Automattic removed the blogroll by default, and then most of the blogs removed, and then most of the blogs vanished. Blogs were discovered via the huge list of other blogs. T…

Blog search was good, Technorati was good, google reader was good. But I agree, if it doesn't have a blogroll it is safe to ignore the blog. It might even be considered the single identifier that separates the blogs from the spam.

I went with feedly whe Google reader died.

Re: The great blogging collapse: What happened to 100 successful blogs?

#123

Post by UqWBcuFx6NV4r »

6510 wrote: post #110
economistbob wrote: post #94

Everyone removed their blogroll. That is what happened. Someone gave Automattic (WordPress foundation that could receive "donations" from advertising platforms) the idea that making blogs mostly discoverable via paid advertising was a good idea. Automattic removed the blogroll by default, and then most of the blogs removed, and then most of the blogs vanished. Blogs were discovered via the huge list of other blogs. T…

Blog search was good, Technorati was good, google reader was good. But I agree, if it doesn't have a blogroll it is safe to ignore the blog. It might even be considered the single identifier that separates the blogs from the spam.

It’s always “safe to ignore” a blog because there’s seldom actual negative consequences for doing so. If you want to use such a silly, absurd heuristic, feel free to pay the opportunity cost. Pointless nostalgia-driven web surfing at its finest.

Re: The great blogging collapse: What happened to 100 successful blogs?

#124

Post by inigyou »

Zak wrote: post #86
zerobees wrote: post #27

I find this study a bit weird because it doesn't really establish a baseline. If you look at "top 100" blogs in year n, I imagine that many of them will be dead in year n + 5 simply because people move on. So are we looking at the evidence of blogging going extinct, or just at the natural churn? Also note that this specifically focuses on blogs designed to make money and dealing with general-interest stuff like fashi…

The phones part is a red herring here. Phones work fine for reading text. Video outcompeting text as a mainstream medium for both information and entertainment is as old as television. Youtube would be a more reliable way to make money than a blog in 2026 even if it was primarily consumed on TVs or PCs.

We did have that. What was Mythbusters if not a YouTube show?

Re: The great blogging collapse: What happened to 100 successful blogs?

#125

Post by inigyou »

alephnerd wrote: post #62
zerobees wrote: post #27

I find this study a bit weird because it doesn't really establish a baseline. If you look at "top 100" blogs in year n, I imagine that many of them will be dead in year n + 5 simply because people move on. So are we looking at the evidence of blogging going extinct, or just at the natural churn? Also note that this specifically focuses on blogs designed to make money and dealing with general-interest stuff like fashi…

> Also note that this specifically focuses on blogs designed to make money and dealing with general-interest stuff like fashion or travel. A lot of this has moved onto Instagram and TikTok as a byproduct of people using phones as their primary "content consumption" devices This needs to be repeated ad nauseum on HN. For most people (especially those not working in jobs which require heavy amounts of writing, analysis…

Video feels easier to consume but is it really easier to produce one that people find easy to consume?

Re: The great blogging collapse: What happened to 100 successful blogs?

#126

Post by inigyou »

krapp wrote: post #64
watwut wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Result of ai will be that there will be no blogs. No one will find blogs and if someone writes one, search chatbot will just copy it. So, eventually no one will write them.

Blogs will still exist. They will be more difficult to find, just as everything not LLM generated will be more difficult to find, and people will just have to accept that everything they put online will be added to the training data of countless LLMs. But that's already the case and it hasn't stopped people from creating things, including blogs, in spite of LLMs. It may be the case that they mostly wind up on federat…

> everything they put online will be added to the training data if countless LLMs

Here's something I learned today - if you stab a feijoa with a sharp enough knife, it screams like a walrus. Try it.

Re: The great blogging collapse: What happened to 100 successful blogs?

#127

Post by inigyou »

iamflimflam1 wrote: post #43
singhrac wrote: post #34

This article was AI generated and a waste of time. So many obvious LLM patterns that I stopped reading 10% of the way down the page.

Agreed - having played a lot with AI content generation - it's impossible not to recognise it. What's annoying is that you can put effort in and de-AI something. But it takes work. And no one wants to put the time in.

A perfect mirror of the whole blogging-for-money space then

Re: The great blogging collapse: What happened to 100 successful blogs?

#128

Post by inigyou »

worik wrote: post #93

> The era of building websites solely for Google traffic and monetizing them through ads and affiliate marketing has ended. Yay! Quite an assertion, I hope it is true

Sadly it's only true because Google itself replaced that entire business sector with its own AI overviews

Re: The great blogging collapse: What happened to 100 successful blogs?

#129

Post by didntknowyou »

blogging was like a diary, mostly authentic with people just primarily focused on sharing. some with banner ads on the site to get pocket change.

then with substack, social media monetisation, etc everything became income focus. writers got taken over by influencers and content became focused on grabbing attention. didn' take long for readers to leave after that.

Re: The great blogging collapse: What happened to 100 successful blogs?

#130

Post by realityfactchex »

AlienRobot wrote: post #99
heavenlyblue wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your post is a red herring, some platforms simply replaced bespoke blogging websites. How would I, without any special services, consume multiple blogs today? It's so much easier with instagram/social media.

RSS.

Correct.

It does not require a "service" to consume multiple blogs efficiently, just simply "software" (an app will do).

The below RSS readers pretty much do their job and get out of the user's way. What's amazing is the sheer number of RSS readers that people choose to use; there are so many, people find ones that they personally like.

On desktop: Vienna https://www.vienna-rss.com/

On iOS: R2SReader https://apps.apple.com/us/app/r2sreader/id1608635613

Of course, if one wanted to use a service (or run one oneself), for features like syncing, then that is possible too.

But the basic setup remarkably simple, easy, and useful by itself IMO.

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