[HN Gopher] Blogging Is Not Dead
___________________________________________________________________
Blogging Is Not Dead
Author : g-garron
Score : 149 points
Date : 2020-05-19 17:28 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.garron.blog)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.garron.blog)
| TrackerFF wrote:
| Is it a cultural thing that differs from country to country? Here
| in Norway, the best paid "influencers" are still bloggers -
| though they are obviously on all channels these days.
|
| edit: But what I'm trying to get at is, no, at least here - blogs
| are not dead and forgotten / some esoteric channel for the very
| few.
| Hoasi wrote:
| Blogging is not dead. It is just unevenly discoverable.
|
| And that creates an interesting problem that is still waiting for
| a solution.
| ImaCake wrote:
| >It is just unevenly discoverable.
|
| I suspect this makes me selfish, but I like it like this. It is
| _fun_ finding out of the way blogs and being part of a tiny
| audience following an interesting but rarely discussed topic.
| dnissley wrote:
| 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.
| ImaCake wrote:
| The problem with any automated method is it is subject to
| hijacking by people who are interested in money.
|
| I think the best thing to do is to return to manual link
| referals. There are plenty of bloggers who will link to other
| blogs throughout their articles, or post articles with explicit
| lists of blogs they like. Good, interesting, blogs will rise to
| the top by being linked a lot.
| skybrian wrote:
| "X is alive / X is dead" is binary thinking and taking sides on
| this is pointless and divisive. Better to use a float rather than
| a boolean to model how popular something is.
| foob wrote:
| 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 run across, and flag stuff
| that's blatantly marketing spam. Leave comments on the blog or
| reach out to the author over email. Even as a single individual,
| these sort of actions have a much bigger impact than you might
| expect.
|
| I used to blog extensively, and I've spent a lot of time thinking
| about this. The content I would write was loosely for marketing
| purposes, but I put a lot of effort into generating high quality
| content that I would genuinely enjoy reading myself. An article
| that I spent 50+ hours on and felt very proud of might have a 30%
| chance of reaching the front page of Hacker News. A fluffy post
| with a decent title that I spent only an hour or two on would
| still have a 10-15% chance of front paging. The way the math
| works out, it's simply much lower ROI to generate quality
| content. It's also a bit heartbreaking to invest a lot of time
| making something for other people to enjoy only for nobody to
| ever see it.
|
| The second chance queue on Hacker News is a major step in the
| right direction, and I'm grateful for all the times where my
| posts were given another chance. A lot of great content still
| slips through the cracks however, and relatively small actions by
| community members would go a long way towards helping incentives
| align towards generating quality content.
| thomasahle wrote:
| Interesting, I didn't know about the second chance queue. This
| appears to be the best source of information:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662380
|
| Personally I was sad when my tiny python chess engine Sunfish
| [1] didn't make it past the two-three upvotes stage. However
| about half a year later somebody else submitted it and it got a
| lot of traction.
|
| I wonder how accepted it is to resubmit the same, or a version
| of, your project or blog post, to try your luck again.
|
| [1] https://github.com/thomasahle/sunfish
| alextheparrot wrote:
| The FAQ guidance seems to be that a few reposts a year iff
| the story didn't already get transaction is fine -- seems
| like a good barometer.
|
| Personally, I'd prefer if someone reposted a good blog post
| or project rather than trying to develop new things just to
| have the ability to post something.
| fossuser wrote:
| 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/hnblogs/
|
| There might be a way to set up rules that lead to interesting
| posts, if the content is restricted to bloggers posting their
| own content it could get more attention than competing for
| space on HN (as long as there are people there to comment).
|
| Happy to open up wiki editing or make suggested changes.
| [Edit]: I made an announcement post there for suggestions.
|
| Also if you have a personal blog and a favorite post - you can
| be the first one to submit something, though I might be the
| only one that ends up reading it :-). [Edit: Anyone reading
| this please do! There are a decent amount of people clicking
| the above link so it'd be neat if there were posts that got
| some traction).
|
| It almost feels like needing to revert to the pre-search engine
| era when there were pages of curated links to interesting
| content.
|
| One issue with HN is since it's general links of interesting
| content it can be hard for personal blogs to compete, maybe a
| focused community could make it easier.
|
| Someone posted a first blog post, I added one too.
| netcan wrote:
| 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 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.
| fossuser wrote:
| I like to do this too.
|
| 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.
| bovermyer wrote:
| I don't think the volume of blogging decreased. It probably
| increased.
|
| The reason some people think blogging is dead is because the blog
| "signal" is much, much quieter than the social media "noise."
| It's a question of comparative volume.
| rhacker wrote:
| 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 software specific websites I visit have ads
| (generally).
|
| Recipe blogs are the worst - here's a sample from pinch of yum:
|
| https://imgur.com/A4e53R5
| llbeansandrice wrote:
| Those aren't blogs, those are businesses. They have a lot more
| in common with other websites that use content as a motivator
| for ad revenue. More like awful news websites than just someone
| writing articles.
|
| I guess it's semantics but I've never considered recipe "blogs"
| as anything near like rachelbythebay or other plain programming
| blogs.
| mr_tristan wrote:
| Unfortunately, blogs == spam in a lot of the non-technical
| world.
|
| The /r/woodworking subreddit used to have a strict "no blogs"
| rule that finally got relaxed to just be more "no blog spam".
|
| I noticed similar problems in Pinterest, where you'll find pins
| that have beautiful images but lead to spam garbage. So, there
| might have been a page that was initially hosting the image
| (probably copied from somewhere else), but then, it gets
| swapped out with an advertising garbage site. And the pin goes
| up in popularity because most users just don't care about the
| backing site.
|
| The wider the potential audience, the bigger the potential for
| spam. And it sure doesn't seem like there's a great, consistent
| way to filter spam. Search engines do not appear to have kept
| pace since the rise of walled garden social networks.
|
| At this point, I would pay for curated, interesting updates.
| It's just hard to see how a product like that would easy to
| find these days.
| chc wrote:
| I use recipe blogs all the time. I'd guess it's just a matter
| of choosing the right ones, because they do have ads, but
| they're hardly unusable -- they're better than, say, my local
| CBS affiliate.
| Spivak wrote:
| 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 -- people who have
| notebooks and scrap books full of recipe clippings from old
| magazines and cake boxes and a shelf of random dog-eared
| culinary textbooks and recipe anthologies that could knock a
| person out if you got hit with them. These blogs are full of
| crappy unflattering photography, zero web design skills, okay-
| ish writing, and cult-like followings.
| munchbunny wrote:
| Do you have any examples of good cooking and baking blogs?
| I've been looking, but as you say, SEO is a problem for
| organic discovery for me.
| ghaff wrote:
| There are tons.
|
| Food52
|
| SpruceEats
|
| Tiny Urban Kitchen
|
| Serious Eats
|
| A lot depends on your food and style preferences.
| watwut wrote:
| 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.
| Finnucane wrote:
| Is there a "Hacker News" equivalent for cooking/foodie
| blogs? If not, there probably could be.
| tekknolagi wrote:
| Sure there is. There's a super well-frequented bread
| forum that is kind of like HN. Experience reports, recipe
| recommendations, etc.
| qznc wrote:
| There is a subreddit for everything they say.
| PerilousD wrote:
| The original article was crap since the author stated "spent an
| hour trying to find blog and ...nothing" Any reasonable response
| would have been an hour trying to figure out where the "return"
| key was is NOT the same thing as an hour spent searching. Blog,
| by folks that don't give a crap about Googles SEO requirements
| exist, have existed and will still exist in the future.
| djsumdog wrote:
| 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 unsubscribe.
|
| If you blog, cross-promote it on Reddit, Twitter, your FB page
| (although if you don't use Twitter/FB often, it'll be just a
| trickle of clicks[1], but it's better than nothing), etc. Try not
| to use another platforms just to promote you. If you see blog
| posts you like, be sure to promote them!
|
| Maybe use one of your RSS reader apps just to dump one of those
| huge github aggregated blog lists with like 500 tech and personal
| blogs. You can scroll through it when you're bored and see if
| there's anything interesting and mark the rest as read.
|
| Maybe setup your own Solr server to index every blog you come
| across just for the hell of it? (I've been meaning to do this
| forever!) The big search engines aren't good at showing us blogs,
| so maybe it's up to us to find and promote them?
|
| [0]: https://battlepenguin.com/tech/rss-the-original-federated-
| so...
|
| [1]: https://battlepenguin.com/tech/facebook-and-the-silent-
| bob-e...
|
| [2]: http://tttthis.com/blog/if-i-could-bring-one-thing-back-
| to-t...
| ManoSinkosika wrote:
| Your content is great. I think blogging will never be dead
| imprettycool wrote:
| The nice thing about RSS is that it's never gonna die
| filmgirlcw wrote:
| 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).
|
| 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.
| souterrain wrote:
| > 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 in the same proportion as
| the individual hosting their own blog or smtp server.
| fossuser wrote:
| A lot of the intent behind Urbit is to solve this (which is
| why I find it pretty interesting) and push things back
| towards decentralization.
|
| 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.
| avian wrote:
| > 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...
| rcarmo wrote:
| 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).
| onli wrote:
| 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 compatible, an extension
| ideally, but they are not. The project was not even
| interested enough to host a trackback/webmention converter,
| which would have given them an enormous adoption boost.
| Signals to me a complete disinterest of the "indie web" to
| integrate with the actually already existing independent and
| open web. I don't get it, it's a shame.
| jakevoytko wrote:
| 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 your posts with posts from everyone
| else. They get to curate individual feeds. People with money get
| to bypass the curation a little.
|
| Don't get me wrong, I have my own blog (link in profile) and I
| deleted my Facebook account years ago. But quite honestly, the
| format is less usable than having centralized aggregators that
| float the most popular content to the top. This is why we're all
| on Hacker News, right? The act of having the aggregator allows
| extra features to be overlayed, like community discussion. Are
| aggregators the "best" format by every metric? No, but it allows
| me to read content I like without doing a lot of work, so here I
| am.
| ravenstine wrote:
| 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.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Google knows very well that they're padding their search
| results with e-commerce sites to the detriment of meaningful
| content.
| tehjoker wrote:
| 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.
| emsal wrote:
| I think there's room for both self-directed aggregation (a la
| reader sites) as well as the centralized aggregator model. It's
| quite shackling to never have any control over the content that
| you're about to consume, and being able to check up on websites
| that you have personally discerned as being good content is
| quite empowering.
| qznc wrote:
| Blogs in the sense of "log your web browsing" is either niche
| as ever or more popular as ever due to like/share buttons.
| NN88 wrote:
| Google reader killed it.
|
| Not to mention, Reddit won't let you post blogs to their largest
| subreddits.
| gtrubetskoy wrote:
| Related - see my Ask HN on _how_ to host your own blog without
| giving it to the centralized blogging services (I won 't name):
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23206094
| gazelle21 wrote:
| IF you have to argue if something is dead or not, it's not a good
| sign.
| vinceguidry wrote:
| 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.
| klondike_klive wrote:
| His name rings a bell - I remember reading his stuff about
| polyphasic sleep. Interesting guy, one of the first "Quantified
| Self" types I became aware of.
| masswerk wrote:
| I'd say, there are significantly less high frequency blogs than,
| say, 10 years ago. One of the reasons for this is the radical
| decline in means of monetization. In the heyday of blogging, you
| could do it for living, with just a few non-obtrusive ads. Which
| has changed a lot. Even, if you would plaster your site with ads,
| like news outlets, with little room left for actually reading,
| chances are, you won't see much of a return. As a result,
| blogging is mostly a hobbyist endeavor (again).
| softwaredoug wrote:
| 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 email address
| for a GREAT newsletter!
|
| I think when a company has a 'blog' it really needs to fulfill a
| contract of actually providing useful, interesting content. It's
| the only way, honestly, your brand will build long term trust.
| Otherwise don't call it a 'blog' call it 'marketing information'
| or something...
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| I mean this is like the Rock Auto newsletter. It's unabashedly
| a bunch of sales spiel about their newest discounts, with one
| fun anecdotal story, a picture of a contestants car, and a pop
| quiz on obscure car knowledge. I love it!
| crazygringo wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| hn_check wrote:
| "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.
| xwdv wrote:
| Blogging is not dead, it's just being rapidly made obsolete by
| commenting.
|
| Comments are everywhere. Total volume of comments on the internet
| compared to blogs is larger by several orders of magnitude.
| Readership is up, _everything_ has comments. Comments don 't care
| about SEO, or money, or fame, that makes them one of the purest
| forms of content you can find on the internet. You could argue
| that some sites have people commenting for fame because of karma
| systems, but ultimately that karma means nothing. Very few
| comments have ever "gone viral" the way a blog or youtube or
| tiktok video tries so hard to. Comments are like graffiti;
| ephemeral, and meant to be enjoyed in the moment you stumble
| across them. Very few comments make any kind of money for their
| author the way a blog does.
|
| Marketing firms have not latched onto comments yet the way they
| latch onto blogs. But when they do, it's over.
| AQuantized wrote:
| 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.
| xwdv wrote:
| 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.
| kansface wrote:
| > 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!
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| > 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?
| MattGaiser wrote:
| $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.
| ImaCake wrote:
| I think that is just enough to make it worthwhile even
| for a poor American. If you can coordinate and plan ahead
| a little you would break minimum wage.
| aSplash0fDerp wrote:
| Good points!
|
| When we start seeing the proliferation of boutique networks
| (with satellite and CBRS bands), I think forums, blogs, BBS`s
| and the real Internet gold (comments, as you stated) will find
| a new canvas to graffiti.
|
| Now that everything is under attack on Internet 1, its the
| perfect time to take the 1% of valuable content and setup shop
| elsewhere, leaving the "ephemeral" content behind (they`ll make
| more).
|
| Perhaps its a western culture thing, but the easiest way to
| move a mountain of digital/analog fecal matter is to walk away
| from it.
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(page generated 2020-05-19 23:00 UTC)