It doesn't say anything about the future of blogging in my opinion. I think the future of blogging is bleak for people who want to make a career (aka a salary) doing it. There is so much noise and so much bullshit online, not to mention amplified/fake stories and zero fact checking (read Ryan Holiday's book Trust Me Im Lying). It doesn't mean people are going to stop reading them or blogging, but the traffic / ad space $ will probably continue to go down as more content continues to spews online.
What Andrew Sullivan's exit says about the future of blogging
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Re: What Andrew Sullivan's exit says about the future of blogging
#22Nothing at all. I don't see comments on his blog. That's not really blogging. Bloggers, who take comments, actually entertaining community dialog are doing just fine. Sullivan will have no impact as that just isn't what he does.
Not really blogging? Thank you so much for your enlightening wisdom. I imagine, then, that Scripting News and other such long-standing blogs need a new moniker. Care to offer one?
Notice the lack of likes, shares, and other promotional items on Scripting News?
I visit there regularly. That author actually produces a lot of things, engages in a variety of places, etc...
Sullivan really isn't the same kind of writer, nor thinker for that matter.
Re: What Andrew Sullivan's exit says about the future of blogging
#23I hadn't even heard of Andrew Sullivan until I bumped into his defense of Brendan Eich. Honestly, good riddance. I hope that Sullivan and Eich both fade into obscurity.
Look, I don't like JavaScript either but it's nothing to get upset about!
Re: What Andrew Sullivan's exit says about the future of blogging
#24I had never heard of him prior to 2 weeks ago. He is exceptionally thoughtful. His reason for quitting blogging seemed reasonable, especially given the timeframes involved. I don't think it says anything about blogging in general that one intelligent person is moving to a new position. On the other hand, I don't know that I'd call the blogosphere vibrant or even very interesting: Crappy mobile browers/keyboards, link…
The original blogosphere concept may be fading, but I don't think that bloggers or readers are suffering because of it. In a sense individual bloggers are like AP reporters and aggregators are the new newspapers. Dozens of AP stories are filed every day and local newspapers pick and choose which ones to include in each edition. The major difference between the traditional newspaper model and link aggregators is that we can easily see all stories filed by an individual blogger, whether they get picked up by our "hometown" paper or not[0]. Sharing a link to a blog post on facebook will never replace quality journalism of course, but I think we've come full circle back to this model because it works. Most people don't have the time or inclination to follow a multitude of different blogs or maintain their own. They just want news and opinion selected for them, by trained editors or a community, and the ability to comment on those stories.
An open exchange of long form ideas between a network of people who each run their own blog has an important place in internet culture, but it doesn't scale very well. It was a golden age, for a time, but the aggregation model as the potential to open those ideas up to a much broader range of people.
[0] I'm actually not sure if the AP allows people to easily "follow" all stories filed by specific reporters, but it doesn't seem like it.
Re: What Andrew Sullivan's exit says about the future of blogging
#25It doesn't say anything about the future of blogging in my opinion. I think the future of blogging is bleak for people who want to make a career (aka a salary) doing it. There is so much noise and so much bullshit online, not to mention amplified/fake stories and zero fact checking (read Ryan Holiday's book Trust Me Im Lying). It doesn't mean people are going to stop reading them or blogging, but the traffic / ad spa…
You don't make a career from the blog itself- you get headhunted because of the attention and the awareness gets you, and you get hired or solicited for all sorts of interesting, lucrative projects.
Re: What Andrew Sullivan's exit says about the future of blogging
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't want to read someone having a conversation with their community, I want to read what they themselves think without the lurking context of the subset of their audience that demands to speak up and be heard right then and there. I also frequently don't like the results of community feedback shaping a blog; a lot of times it just puts the writer on the defensive all the time, and can easily become toxic and cont…
He's broadcasting, not blogging. And I like writers on the defensive. When they write crap, and they take comments, the crap comes up awful quick. Notice how a lot of sites don't take comments? Notice how many of them are very seriously moderated? One could argue trolls, and that's a fair case. However, not actually being out there enough to take feedback on one's words tends to make nice, magic, bubbles, filled with…
You make the assumption that a lack of on-site comments is a lack of feedback, which I think isn't substantiated.
I don't use an RSS reader or similar, so when I read a blog post, it's generally because it reaches me through some form of social media -- friends or coworkers sending links around via IM or email, Twitter, Hacker News, Reddit, or so forth. All of these mechanisms come with a built-in avenue for comment. All of these mechanisms also ensure that, unless I know the author directly, someone other than the author thought the post merited reading. This works as a natural feedback cycle if the author cares about impact at all. (And if they don't, comments wouldn't help.)
And as the internet democratizes, perhaps the best feedback mechanism is for commenters to have their own blogs. Nothing requires giving the world a chance to speak at your own pulpit.
Re: What Andrew Sullivan's exit says about the future of blogging
#27Nothing at all. I don't see comments on his blog. That's not really blogging. Bloggers, who take comments, actually entertaining community dialog are doing just fine. Sullivan will have no impact as that just isn't what he does.
I don't want to read someone having a conversation with their community, I want to read what they themselves think without the lurking context of the subset of their audience that demands to speak up and be heard right then and there. I also frequently don't like the results of community feedback shaping a blog; a lot of times it just puts the writer on the defensive all the time, and can easily become toxic and cont…
> I also frequently don't like the results of community feedback shaping a blog; a lot of times it just puts the writer on the defensive all the time, and can easily become toxic and contribute to burnout.
Or, the blogger panders to the worst of his commenters and it forms a cesspool of mutually reinforcing bigotry.
Re: What Andrew Sullivan's exit says about the future of blogging
#28I had never heard of him prior to 2 weeks ago. He is exceptionally thoughtful. His reason for quitting blogging seemed reasonable, especially given the timeframes involved. I don't think it says anything about blogging in general that one intelligent person is moving to a new position. On the other hand, I don't know that I'd call the blogosphere vibrant or even very interesting: Crappy mobile browers/keyboards, link…
As a person who prefers this new style of aggregators let me explain:
The main idea is consistency.
There's a consistent interface and experience to hacker news, reddit, and even facebook.
Not only that, there's a consistent community. HN is HN, reddit groups by subreddits, and Facebook is your personal social circle.
When I click through to a new blog, I have no idea what to expect, and a few bad websites ruin my expectation of all the good ones.
-- that applies to both the interface and the community. Both are foreign and unfamiliar.
Re: What Andrew Sullivan's exit says about the future of blogging
#29I hadn't even heard of Andrew Sullivan until I bumped into his defense of Brendan Eich. Honestly, good riddance. I hope that Sullivan and Eich both fade into obscurity.
Does it matter that Andrew Sullivan was one of the early and very vocal champions of gay marriage? Or that he is quite openly gay and married himself? If you haven't heard of him, you might not have known that and it may change the way you view his defense of Brendan Eich. In addition to being a champion of gay marriage, Sullivan is a proponent of liberalism in the old sense of the word. I think his defense of gay marriage was always so compelling because he gave respect to people who disagreed with them while showing how wrong they were on the issue.
Re: What Andrew Sullivan's exit says about the future of blogging
#30I'm not Sullivan's biggest fan, but... if Sullivan can't make it as a blogger, who can? Sullivan has a wealthy, educated audience that should be catnip to advertisers -- particularly with his particularly distinct influence among gay and politically liberal niches. He's possibly the most well-known blogger today and his Dish audience piggybacks from his previous work with The Atlantic. And while it's not easy to run…
"if Sullivan can't make it as a blogger, who can?"
How didn't he make it work? He made it work, but he wants to try something different. I don't think his decision says anything about blogging that it doesn't say about many other go-it-your-own-way ventures like writing physical books, recording music, gigging, crafting, etc.