51–60 of 132 posts
A blogger I used to follow, Steve Pavlina, shut down his forums like in 2011 after 5 years of running them stating that they were always completely irrelevant to his biz model. He's still posting to his blog, daily, having started in 2004. Still going strong after 15 years.
And even into the early 2010s, Tumblr was still a thriving community that paid host to many different different subcultures and demographics (whereas today, Tumblr is largely fandom).
But now? The spammers helped murder the pingback/trackback -- RSS is still alive but it is often hidden and isn't even always a default for various static site blogging engines -- not to mention the lengths web browsers go to to deny that RSS even exists -- and the art of finding quality like-minded blogs of any size, is incredibly difficult.
Google had a blog search part of its search engine but shut that down nearly a decade ago. (Frankly, the fact that Google keeps Blogger running is sort of amazing, although I would be shocked if more than one or two full time employees worked on it -- I have to assume all the maintenance is done by vendors and contractors.)
Moreover, we've moved our communications to silos that don't allow for easy syndication (you haven't been able to auto-publish your blog/website to Facebook for years, for instance) or to formats (video), that are reliant on major giants (YouTube, Twitch, and to a lesser but growing extent, TikTok) rather than a user's own platform -- and that require a much higher barrier to entry for creators than blogging ever did. Way more people consumed blog content than ever regularly made their own blog -- but now it's even greater.
But beyond the various platform silos and the move away from decentralized to closed social network behemoths, blogging also never properly embraced mobile. The act of blogging on mobile was too difficult for too long (Tumblr being the one exception), while Facebook and Twitter were quick to become mobile-first (and in Twitter's case, was originally designed for mobile).
Blogging isn't dead but the curation and discovery tools that made it really take off in the 2000s is.
As someone who owes their entire career to blogging, this makes me sad. But it is what it is.
If you want to see more high quality blog posts, then I highly recommend taking actions to help promote and encourage them. Sign up for a mailing list or subscribe to an RSS feed when you find a blog that consistently produces quality material. Post new or old content on Hacker News, Reddit, Lobsters, Twitter, and other communities where you think they would be a good fit. Upvote and retweet quality content that you…
Anyway, the podcaster went dark for a week and then posted something about hiatus. I sent him a "thanks for the content, I'll be here when you get back" type message.
A week or two later an episode went online. He explained that he has periodic depression issues, read out my message and explained how it made him feel better. He'd been dwelling on "everyone knows and thinks I'm an idiot" thoughts that come with the territory. Just a friendly thanks (to someone providing me a show for free) meant something to him in that moment.
Since then I try make a point of little things like that, especially to little guys.
Let them know you enjoy a blog, if you do. Thank them. Be friendly. We all need encouragement, and I now feel that we also owe it.
And I definitely agree on the promotion too.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Is there a "Hacker News" equivalent for cooking/foodie blogs? If not, there probably could be.
If you want to see more high quality blog posts, then I highly recommend taking actions to help promote and encourage them. Sign up for a mailing list or subscribe to an RSS feed when you find a blog that consistently produces quality material. Post new or old content on Hacker News, Reddit, Lobsters, Twitter, and other communities where you think they would be a good fit. Upvote and retweet quality content that you…
About 15 years ago I was following some small podcast on my new ipod nano. Nothing too grandiose. It was about beekeeping, worm farming... Probably dozens of listeners, hundreds at most Anyway, the podcaster went dark for a week and then posted something about hiatus. I sent him a " thanks for the content, I'll be here when you get back " type message. A week or two later an episode went online. He explained that he…
It's fun to email an author when I really like their book with a short message that I enjoyed it. I do the same for little open source projects too.
Usually you get a small response back - I think it's one of the best things about the internet.
Blogging isn't dead but blog discovery basically is. Fifteen years ago (through about 2009, I would say -- about the time Facebook demonstrably took over MySpace), there were tons of services and startups built around blog discovery. And even into the early 2010s, Tumblr was still a thriving community that paid host to many different different subcultures and demographics (whereas today, Tumblr is largely fandom). Bu…
Spammers are such superb agents of Internet centralisation. It seems both decentralised mail and content netizens have little choice but to seek shelter with large service providers as a defence from the trash on the net.
I’m not saying the large players have a hand in spam, but they certainly aren’t being harmed by it in the same proportion as the individual hosting their own blog or smtp server.
Blogging isn't dead but blog discovery basically is. Fifteen years ago (through about 2009, I would say -- about the time Facebook demonstrably took over MySpace), there were tons of services and startups built around blog discovery. And even into the early 2010s, Tumblr was still a thriving community that paid host to many different different subcultures and demographics (whereas today, Tumblr is largely fandom). Bu…
> But now? The spammers helped murder the pingback/trackback -- RSS is still alive but it is often Spammers are such superb agents of Internet centralisation. It seems both decentralised mail and content netizens have little choice but to seek shelter with large service providers as a defence from the trash on the net. I’m not saying the large players have a hand in spam, but they certainly aren’t being harmed by it…
Basically have a small cost to creating an identity in the network to prevent spam. The system is peer-to-peer where each user has their own 'server' on their local machine which interacts directly with the server's of other users.
It's a pretty neat idea, they recently released their first version.