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Blogging Is Not Dead

garron.blog

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Re: Blogging Is Not Dead

#21

Post by ravenstine »

jakevoytko wrote: post #6

We're overly attached to a specific idea of a "blog". In practice, "web logging" never died, even if the specific blog format has diminished over time. Blogs are websites that host posts in chronological order, but defined in a very specific way that excludes your Facebook and Twitter. The difference isn't self-hosting - Blogger and Wordpress.com host your blog. I reckon the difference is aggregation. Facebook groups…

Isn't the need for aggregators a failure of search engines? To the credit of Google, as much as I disdain them, combating SEO spam is a hard problem. I think that blogging feels "dead" because of SEO spam and because ads pay for jack shit these days.

Re: Blogging Is Not Dead

#22

Post by hn_check »

crazygringo wrote: post #5
softwaredoug wrote: post #2

It all changed when marketing firms latched onto "blogging" Now it's sadly the case a lot of blogs don't have a lot of content, are full of SEO boilerplate, with click-bait headlines instead of being interesting or well written. Some blogs are great, well-written lead ins that end with "to get the end of this story, contact our sales person for a demo!". Or there's the form that pops up that really, really wants your…

I don't think it changed at all. It's not like the old bloggers became marketing bloggers. They didn't change. The marketing blogs just became a new thing, a separate thing. I don't think I've ever been confused between the two, despite them both being called blogs. It's pretty obvious that a personal blog is one thing, and a company blog is another. They're both "weblogs", neither has a greater right to the name.

"I don't think it changed at all. It's not like the old bloggers became marketing bloggers"

The old bloggers all just moved on. Or at least the vast majority of them did. The number of terrible blogs are legion.

Everyone has a motivation for the things they do, and a lot of the time the motivation for a blog is professional credibility/development, and for the self-employed, more directly in "leads" and good business.

Neither works out. After your dozen-th time on the front-page of HN you realize it works the same as always -- a lot of passing, casual readers who might find the content exemplary but...eh. There was a time when those people would become regulars because you showed that you make good content, but it's just unnecessary now. Just watch HN and Reddit and if they make something good again, maybe it'll appear there.

Re: Blogging Is Not Dead

#23

Post by watwut »

Spivak wrote: post #18
rhacker wrote: post #15

Get out of the software development blogging bubble. Spend 3 minutes looking at each of the following: Look at woodworking blogs, recipe blogs, gardening blogs. One thing you'll note is that those are all filled with a shit fuck ton of ads and are completely unusable. I know this because my wife wades through that stuff and the only way she can is by using a blocker. I don't use a blocker because very few of the soft…

I would hesitate to call recipe blogs "blogs." They're ad farms with good SEO and the thinnest veneer of content to get clicks. There are actual cooking and baking blogs of the quality you see in software where professionals or hobbyists talk about their craft but they won't show up on Google with terms like "$food_name recipe" and it doesn't really make sense for them to. Cooking blogs are for cooking nerds -- peopl…

It would actually made sense of them to show up. What google chooses to show does not make sense to show up. When it comes to cooking, google is just horribly bad.

Re: Blogging Is Not Dead

#25

Post by MattGaiser »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #16
AQuantized wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this underestimates how much exploitation of this idea of comments as unbiased is currently taking place. There's a reason you can sell a Reddit account with a ton of karma and activity for a decent buck. Tons of PR firms now utilize faux accounts on almost all social media.

> There's a reason you can sell a Reddit account with a ton of karma and activity for a decent buck. What does "a decent buck" amount to, these days? How much does it take to get people to sell their reputation to an unethical marketing firm?

$16-$20.

https://www.playerup.com/accounts/redditaccount/

Not a lot for Westerners, but that is a week of wages in a place like Ghana. Decent pay for re-posting popular content.

Re: Blogging Is Not Dead

#26

Post by rcarmo »

avian wrote: post #3

> We also have webmentions, so, if bloggers start using it, it will help us find other's blogs. My informal research [1] shows approximately zero adoption of webmention. For 44 blog posts I have written in the past two years, I did not have a single external link to a host that would support it. [1] https://www.tablix.org/~avian/blog/archives/2020/01/checking...

Webmentions, pingbacks and the like were often abused for link spam. I disabled all of that on my blog ages ago (and I had to implement it in the first place, so... that was a drag).

Re: Blogging Is Not Dead

#27

Post by dnissley »

The blog discovery story is terrible, which I think is the only thing that would make someone say that blogging is dead. Anyone know of any good solutions for this?

I've been kicking around an idea about manually associating blogs to twitter accounts, and then using twitter follows to create a graph for discovery purposes.

Re: Blogging Is Not Dead

#28

Post by tehjoker »

jakevoytko wrote: post #6

We're overly attached to a specific idea of a "blog". In practice, "web logging" never died, even if the specific blog format has diminished over time. Blogs are websites that host posts in chronological order, but defined in a very specific way that excludes your Facebook and Twitter. The difference isn't self-hosting - Blogger and Wordpress.com host your blog. I reckon the difference is aggregation. Facebook groups…

This seems right, but I think it's also about authorial control of format and the expectation of readers that they are going to possibly read longer texts. Twitter is very up front about formats and character limits. Facebook is less dramatic but still very self contained. The placement alongside many other items that scream for attention, the possibility that facebook won't present it to your audience, presentation, and interactions mean investing in forms of writing outside the constraints of the medium is just not very worthwhile.

There are places in Facebook where longer form writing is possible, but the system still doesn't really encourage it.

Re: Blogging Is Not Dead

#30

Post by kansface »

xwdv wrote: post #13
AQuantized wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this underestimates how much exploitation of this idea of comments as unbiased is currently taking place. There's a reason you can sell a Reddit account with a ton of karma and activity for a decent buck. Tons of PR firms now utilize faux accounts on almost all social media.

Those however are a small portion of total comments. Pretty much whenever you see a blog you can bet it's being monetized somehow or used for some financial gain. When you see a comment, it's unlikely there is any motive behind it beyond expressing an idea. Now imagine the world where every comment is also some kind of ad or invitation to buy or subscribe to something. Hell.

> Those however are a small portion of total comments. When you see a comment, it's unlikely there is any motive behind it beyond expressing an idea.

I haven't read or seen any studies. I'm really curious what percentage of the average reddit thread's comments are from companies, nation states, and paid for power users.

> Now imagine the world where every comment is also some kind of ad or invitation to buy or subscribe to something. Hell.

That would be product reviews!

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