51–60 of 191 posts
So, you can move on, you can go fully away from the blogosphere (it was a word, 20 years ago), this will not change that I am happy writing my ideas/thoughts down, for me.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What happened to Slashdot wasn't a "consolidation", though, it was a suicide. I was a heavy reader of the site up until they had an infamous redesign that made the site literally unusable for me, so I left. That's very different from the scenario discussed in the article.
It is an interesting case study. Most designers would not think that they can tank a site.
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…
> 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. This is a far more dubious hypothetical. I imagine that the top 100 of anything (that a lot of people do) that brings in income or fame will still be there in 5 years. They're the most successful, most profitable of the bunch. How many of the top 100 companies in terms of revenue do you im…
This sort of blanket assumption is exactly what the parent is arguing against. The mortality rate of top-n things is relatively easy to measure, and should be baselined first. Then we can compare recent performance vs historical performance, and actually say if something has changed. There's no need to start with the assumption "not much changes over 5 years" -- it can be measured instead.
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.
> We believe that this document is a mix of AI-generated, and human-written content: 78% AI likelihood
There's zero overlap between this list and the blogs I read. Looking over the list, there seem to be a lot of "mommy blogs?"
Mommy bloggers was probably the most ludicrous niche back then. Tons of consumer companies wanted to pay them to promote their product or have a “giveaway”
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is an interesting case study. Most designers would not think that they can tank a site.
One of the smartest things reddit ever did was ensure old.reddit.com remains fully functional. I imagine one day they'll EOL it, and when they do I'll no longer be a reddit user (probably not really a bad thing).
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…
> 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. This is a far more dubious hypothetical. I imagine that the top 100 of anything (that a lot of people do) that brings in income or fame will still be there in 5 years. They're the most successful, most profitable of the bunch. How many of the top 100 companies in terms of revenue do you im…
It's hard to find non-paywalled sources for business analysis, but from what I can find it'd be about 20%.
I think you could argue that this is following the same trend as forums (and usenet before that). You get a consolidation of where people go to read up on things that interest them. Look at Slashdot for example, it was once so popular that any site it linked to could be "slashdotted" from all the traffic. Now people go elsewhere. YouTube, TikTok, Reddit.
What happened to Slashdot wasn't a "consolidation", though, it was a suicide. I was a heavy reader of the site up until they had an infamous redesign that made the site literally unusable for me, so I left. That's very different from the scenario discussed in the article.
(When RMS was 'cancelled', that would have been a huge deal there in the old days, they had one post days later.)
Also Digg wasn't just a graphical redesign, they changed how the site worked. I don't think Slashdot ever did that.
If you gave me one of the "100 Successful Blogs" without framing it as a "successful blog", I would not say "this is a successful blog". The 5 or so I looked at all seemed very similar, like they were part of an MLM scheme, and had uninteresting content. I did not recognize a single one of the 100.
This whole thing is a pretty fascinating insight into a whole other corner of the internet ecosystem: > For more than a decade, one of the most rewarding blueprints for making money online was to “start a blog." Then: > These hundred authority sites and blogs were chosen back in 2022 as they appeared in “bloggers who make six figures” roundups that the entire creator economy circulated as evidence that the model was…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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. This is a far more dubious hypothetical. I imagine that the top 100 of anything (that a lot of people do) that brings in income or fame will still be there in 5 years. They're the most successful, most profitable of the bunch. How many of the top 100 companies in terms of revenue do you im…
If we use the S&P 500 as a proxy for the top 500 companies, I would guess that a lot more than 0% will be gone by the end of 5 years. It's hard to find non-paywalled sources for business analysis, but from what I can find it'd be about 20%.
https://www.exchangecapital.com/blog/why-the-sp-500-isnt-wha...
and accelerating apparently
https://blog.irvingwb.com/blog/2020/01/the-pace-of-creative-...