It’s really interesting that HN can be a long term asynchronous channel for discourse through independent blogs
Blogging Is Not Dead
71–80 of 132 posts
Re: Blogging Is Not Dead
#72Get 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…
That's a weird double standard.
People say they miss blogs of yesteryear (like in the HN submission in TFA) as if they don't still exist. And then people hold up made-for-ads spamsites, like you, and go "see? blogs are dead!"
Why not use the same standard of yesteryear and find some good blogs.
My thoughts on this topic is that everyone who says they miss blogs just stopped looking for them. Our internet usage patterns have changed. Blogs still exist but we just stay in our Reddit/HN bubble and assume it's just wasteland outside of it. It's a silly mistake and something you see HNers condescendingly accusing the masses of, thinking the internet=Facebook.
Re: Blogging Is Not Dead
#73Re: Blogging Is Not Dead
#74There are many blogs today but when (many) people say they miss the old days of blogging, it is mostly not about the number of blogs.
Back then, there was a huge community around blogs. That community has moved to Twitter and other places. Previously, people would comment on blogs and if you are a frequent reader of a blog, you would recognize a lot of people who comment there and you may even become friends with them. Constructive comments have moved away from the blogs and are now on Twitter, Hacker News, Reddit etc.
There used to be services specifically around the blogging space, like Technorati (and even StumbleUpon to an extent).
I also feel, and this might just be me, people have started associating purpose with mediums. If you want to post silly or just casual stuff, you post it on Twitter. If you have something really valuable and on brand, you post it on your blog. People used to post everything to their blogs because that's where they could previously share their thoughts.
Re: Blogging Is Not Dead
#75It 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.
The change is the lower signal to noise on Google, Twitter, etc. So discoverability of good blog articles becomes ever tougher given how much crap is out there. This discourages new bloggers...
Re: Blogging Is Not Dead
#76Get 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…
That's a weird double standard. People say they miss blogs of yesteryear (like in the HN submission in TFA) as if they don't still exist. And then people hold up made-for-ads spamsites, like you, and go "see? blogs are dead!" Why not use the same standard of yesteryear and find some good blogs. My thoughts on this topic is that everyone who says they miss blogs just stopped looking for them. Our internet usage patter…
> Our internet usage patterns have changed. Blogs still exist but we just stay in our Reddit/HN bubble and assume it's just wasteland outside of it.
I agree, but I also... don’t really know how to look for them anymore? Which I know sounds silly. Thinking back to some of my favorite blogs that I read in the early 2000s I found them via IRL word of mouth, Asking Jeeves random stuff, links from message boards, and interesting bloggers commenting on blogs I read.
Other than HN and some niche subreddits I guess I don’t really know how to find cool/unique content on the internet that someone hasn’t paid for me to stumble across. I periodically ask interesting people here if they have a blog but the answer is usually no. Maybe hnblogs.ycombinator.com is in the five year plan? As soon as someone figures out how to clone dang...
Re: Blogging Is Not Dead
#77Blogging 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…
> Spammers are such superb agents of Internet centralisation.
I think this is very close to the heart of why decentralization hasn't worked (yet?)
Try to design a decentralized system that is resistant to abuse, and really think through the loopholes as an attacker would.
It's very difficult.
Decentralization is little villages. Little villages are weak and they gain strength against their common enemies as they band together.
So there's a natural force toward centralization that isn't countered by anything but a lot of slogging through the engineering challenges of trying to make decentralization work.
Re: Blogging Is Not Dead
#78What makes content discoverable on Twitter? Reposting and linking to other posts.
Bloggers should do more of that.
Re: Blogging Is Not Dead
#79If 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…
What do you recommend as a good RSS reader these days? Can't say that I found one I like.
Re: Blogging Is Not Dead
#80From a blog without an RSS feed...