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Blogging Is Not Dead

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Re: Blogging Is Not Dead

#91

Post by shruubi »

I've tried blogging in the past, but have since given up on it. I found that I was putting in a lot of time and effort to have my work read by maybe 3-5 people and came to the conclusion that I had nothing interesting or worthwhile to contribute or say, nor am I a person who can compete with the usual horde of twitter-tech-celebrities who seemingly control a majority of the audience.

These days, whether it be blogs or social media, the end goal is becoming less about saying something worthwhile and more about building and maintaining some kind of personal brand. So while I'll continue being another worthless face in the crowd, consuming content, I also won't mourn the death of blogging or any other similar forms.

Re: Blogging Is Not Dead

#92

Post by raindropm »

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…

Everything ruined when money get involves. It always dilute the value of something into money making machine 'trend' for some get rich quick marketer, they milk it dry(or try to), often in a spammy, tasteless way, then move on to(ruin) something new. What a shallow society we live in.

Re: Blogging Is Not Dead

#93

Post by michaelbrooks »

gonehome wrote: post #44
foob wrote: post #14

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…

It would be neat to have an HN like place that restricted posts to only blog like content (where the rules are defined in some way to try and prevent marketing blogs/ad-farms). A subreddit could be the place for this, but it might be tricky to kickstart a community with interesting content. Then if successful could move it to its own community somehow (similar to CMV). I created one here: https://www.reddit.com/r/hnb…

Another place to check out is https://weirdwidewebring.net/ where you can submit your blogs via a GitHub PR. It was created by Jack McDade whose an all-round great guy.

Re: Blogging Is Not Dead

#94

Post by marcus_holmes »

gonehome wrote: post #44
foob wrote: post #14

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…

It would be neat to have an HN like place that restricted posts to only blog like content (where the rules are defined in some way to try and prevent marketing blogs/ad-farms). A subreddit could be the place for this, but it might be tricky to kickstart a community with interesting content. Then if successful could move it to its own community somehow (similar to CMV). I created one here: https://www.reddit.com/r/hnb…

The irony of doing this on Reddit is striking ;)

Re: Blogging Is Not Dead

#95

Post by Cthulhu_ »

milap wrote: post #88

We need youtube for bloggers.

Youtube is already dominated by bloggers, it's all game reviews, food / cooking, makeup, etc. Just open it up in an anonymous browser window and you'll see what I mean.

However, and I'm making an assumption here, it's not the blogs you're personally interested in.

I bought a synthesizer the other day (UNO Synth, relatively cheap (most electronic instruments are expensive I'm afraid :( )) and you quickly run into the music youtubers, just people at their own home or home studio that show you a product and fiddle with it. There is a LOT of content like that on youtube, in all genres.

It's just that they're not for everyone. I prefer reading a blog over watching a video about programming. I don't like having to listen to people (except if it's my adopted dad AvE), and I don't have the patience to sit through a half hour video.

But it's there. One channel that frequently features something that would be on HN is Tom Scott, who makes a wide range of relatively short / punchy videos about a subject, ranging from weird art installations in the middle of nowhere to the basics of computers and text compression. That is blog content, it's just that the presentation is different.

Re: Blogging Is Not Dead

#96

Post by hopesthoughts »

michaelbrooks wrote: post #93
gonehome wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be neat to have an HN like place that restricted posts to only blog like content (where the rules are defined in some way to try and prevent marketing blogs/ad-farms). A subreddit could be the place for this, but it might be tricky to kickstart a community with interesting content. Then if successful could move it to its own community somehow (similar to CMV). I created one here: https://www.reddit.com/r/hnb…

Another place to check out is https://weirdwidewebring.net/ where you can submit your blogs via a GitHub PR. It was created by Jack McDade whose an all-round great guy.

Webrings were definitely something cool when I was first coming online. I'm glad they're coming back!

Re: Blogging Is Not Dead

#97

Post by njkleiner »

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...

Not quite true, Webmentions are used extensively by the IndieWeb[0] community (which is where the Webmention spec was born).

It's unfortunate that the author linked to the Wikipedia page instead of the Webmention page on IndieWeb wiki[1], which I'd argue is the canonical point of reference, since it has a lot more information and various examples.

It's arguably a niche feature used by a niche community, but it doesn't have to stay that way! Adding Webmention support to your website is actually quite easy since there are free hosted services[2] that let you receive Webmentions to any URL on your (static) site without having to run any code yourself.

[0]: https://indieweb.org [1]: https://indieweb.org/Webmention [2]: https://webmention.io

Re: Blogging Is Not Dead

#98

Post by hopesthoughts »

djsumdog wrote: post #46

I still had that previous article the author references in another tab[2]. Yes, use an RSS Reader. RSS is not dead[0]. Hackernews often has blog posts. If you see a post you like, go to the main page and see if you like any of the other posts. If it's a blog you think you want to follow, subscribe to it. If, after a few months, you find none of the articles are interesting and often mark them all read, then just unsu…

I've never stopped using RSS. I'm now up to over 500 feeds. It took me a really long while to find a service I was happy with after Google Reader shut down, and it's still not perfect. However I've gotten it to where I can use it efficiently.

Re: Blogging Is Not Dead

#99

Post by njkleiner »

onli wrote: post #37
rcarmo wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Webmentions don't exist for that long. It's unlikely you had to disable them ages ago. But they are basically trackbacks and it's easy to conflate them. That's also something I should repeat. As someone involved in an active blog engine project for many years now, webmentions annoyed me. They seemingly ignored that trackbacks existed and had already solved the issues webmentions now solve again. They should have been…

They were never really supposed to be interoperable with pingback from what I can tell, see the reasons here[0].

You're right in the sense that it's a classic case of , but FYI there is a pingback to Webmention converter now[1].

[0]: https://indieweb.org/Webmention-faq#Why_webmention_instead_o... [1]: https://webmention.io/#forwarding

Re: Blogging Is Not Dead

#100

Post by redis_mlc »

raindropm wrote: post #92
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…

Everything ruined when money get involves. It always dilute the value of something into money making machine 'trend' for some get rich quick marketer, they milk it dry(or try to), often in a spammy, tasteless way, then move on to(ruin) something new. What a shallow society we live in.

> Everything ruined when money get involves.

Actually, you won't see much content if the creators don't get paid.

So the problem is how to get money to them.

Patreon is still one of the very few success stories here, depositing over 90% of contributions directly to creators.

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