5 ms·

Blogs exist, they just morphed. People with things to say moved to platforms, like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Youtube, Twitch, or Medium. This is because th

by krapht 6y ago

Blogs exist, they just morphed. People with things to say moved to platforms, like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Youtube, Twitch, or Medium. This is because there's no point in self-hosting; using a platform is free and gives you some degree of discoverability. Nobody wants to self-host on their own domain because it costs money and you need at least some rudimentary tech/sysadmin skills. Self-hosting doesn't solve the biggest problem of blogging - which is that nobody will read your work.

specialp 6y ago
Facebook makes your content virtually inaccessible and discoverable from those outside Facebook. They are the opposite of the way things were on the open web. Medium "is easy" but they are gradually asking more and more of people visiting too. Twitter is a good platform for streams of thought but it is a terrible "blogging" platform. Having "a series of tweets" does not make for a blog. It is hard to read and terrible. But you are right. People feel they don't need to self host because these things are there. The problem is you then no longer own your content distribution and are at the whim of them walling it off or shutting down.
- ordinaryradical 6y ago
  I’d really like to see a “Medium minus the bullshit” service. Those pages are so full of js garbage they just feel awful to read and most of the interactions Medium tries to lead you toward are even more painful.
  - christiansakai 6y ago
    I’m curious. Have any company or anyone implemented something like this? Basically let people blog and let author themselves pay (instead of being paid by ads) subscription fee to pay cloud machine that hosts their content. I think something does exist in Ethereum platform but why it doesn’t exist out there anywhere else.
    - DarrenDev 6y ago
      Wordpress.com is exactly this. But it's not new and trendy.
    - dotmanish 6y ago
      Letting authors pay for hosting/infra is what commercial plans for WordPress.com do.
    - marpstar 6y ago
      Ghost.org offers hosting
    - Nextgrid 6y ago
      I recently checked out Write.as and it fits the bill. It’s a paid blogging platform (the backend is open source so you can self-host). Svbtle is also good if you don’t mind mandatory Google Analytics that you can’t disable (I left the platform because of that). Squarespace can also be used as a blog although it’s more general-purpose than just blogging and a bit more expensive as a result.
    - alisonatwork 6y ago
      LiveJournal has worked this way for decades and still exists.
      - dsr_ 6y ago
        And DreamWidth.org does LJ better in every way.
      - skyfaller 6y ago
        Dreamwidth is the spiritual successor. https://www.dreamwidth.org/ https://www.dreamwidth.org/ LiveJournal went closed source in 2014. It was also bought by Russians, relocated its servers to Russia, and began enforcing Russian law in 2017, which included laws against "gay propaganda", which was when me and my remaining friends abandoned the service for good.
    - sjf 6y ago
      This was the model back in the 2000s before monetization was big on the internet. This is really the key issue, not whether RSS feeds or dead or if it is too hard for people to self-host blogs. The internet has changed a lot in the last ten years. People have realized that popular content has a big monetary potential, and it is far easier now to get compensated (remember when YouTube content creators couldn't monetize?). More content is created as a income source, than out of passion or interest. Search results are gamed by commerical blogs. The average hobby blogger can't compete with that.
  - pier25 6y ago
    > Medium minus the bullshit I'm actually working on something with that spirit. https://pluma.cloud/ https://pluma.cloud/ We will put a "subscribe for updates!" form at some point. You can follow us on Twitter though: https://twitter.com/plumacloud https://twitter.com/plumacloud
    - naravara 6y ago
      >I'm actually working on something with that spirit. Sincere question, not trying to be snarky. Since much (though not all) of the bullshit in Medium is their weak attempts at monetization, what's the bullshit-free alternative business plan to sustain and scale pluma over the long term?
      - pier25 6y ago
        Since we won't track users, sell data, or use ads... the only ethical option is having paying customers. If you look at Ghost, WPEngine, etc, there are a lot of people willing to pay for being able to blog independently. We are betting that within that market there is a niche of people that want to do it as easily as possible, which I think is Medium's best feature.
  - agustif 6y ago
    As an everyday sufferer of the Medium bullshit, I've this on my idea bucket list, just never got to actually build it.
Grimm1 6y ago
Right but this creates a new issue, those platforms can moderate what you can say, and not every controversial statement is wrong or bad, but to avoid liability these platforms moderate it away. Then the other related issue is on the chance that what wasn't previously controversial becomes controversial they can go back and scrub older posts. Hosting your own blog protects you from this. They have offered a lot of benefits but they also have the ability to censor.
petercooper 6y ago
Self-hosting doesn't solve the biggest problem of blogging - which is that nobody will read your work. I started blogging in 1999 (and sadly there are the Wayback Machine archives to prove how juvenile I was!) and it was either self host or use Blogger. Discoverability was pretty interesting. Most blogs' traffic didn't come from search engines (Google existed but it was pretty much geeks only) or platforms, but from other blogs whether by being referenced in a post, via a sidebar link, or via a webring or similar device. Getting over 100 visitors a day to your blog would be a big deal! Getting other bloggers' attention via linking to them was a big part of things or leaving comments on their blog. These things barely move the needle anymore. While I have a lot of nostalgia for those days, I think there's actually a lot of other ways to be discovered now. Sites like Hacker News, Reddit, Lobsters, Designer News, etc. provide opportunities to be found within various sub-communities. Most people have Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social profiles on which they can share their links, often findable via hashtags people are monitoring. There are 1001 email newsletters that are always seeking out interesting things to link to. So, I dunno, is discovery really a problem nowadays? I don't think it is, but maybe I'm too "in the game" to see the problems people are having with it. If anything, I think there's just too much to do nowadays and we're really competing with there being 100x more people online than 20 years ago.
- noobaccount 6y ago
  I used to like the stuff I’m reading and now I don’t. The stuff everybody is reading has gotten very extra. So discoverability is a problem.
  - petercooper 6y ago
    You bring up a good point I hadn't really thought about. I was thinking purely about discoverability in terms of the blogger's perspective rather than the reader. You're right, unless you're already following the people who are broadcasting their blogs in all of these various places or live on Reddit/Hacker News/etc., you're going to struggle to find them more now than ever before.
blablabla123 6y ago
To me it's more that Blogs vanished and the people that spent time with it moved their attention onto different media, especially Twitter. Both exploring and maintaining blogs is an effort, and I think what's left are tech blogs and blogs attached to news or magazine websites that are written by professional Journalists. Medium and Youtube also seems more like something for people who spent a lot of effort on this. I think most people resorted to platforms for hosting the blogs. Not sure if it's so important if many people read something as long as it's interesting for some people.
vlkr 6y ago
The bloggers went to places where the eyeballs are. If you read a good book, make photo and post it with a comment on instagram. You will get much more reaction than with a blogpost on your private blog. Same for forums. If you are looking for a community with a special interest you will have more luck to find an active facebook group than a independent forum/message board somewhere else.
secabeen 6y ago
The challenge with platforms is that they have big incentives to push small, regular updates and posts, to increase impressions. Thoughtful, considered content and engaged responses are lost in the noise.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
larsrc 6y ago
If you think the biggest problem of blogging is that nobody will read your work, you're not blogging, you're angling for popularity (or ad dollars, which comes out to the same in the end). If you have something interesting to write, write it in a blog. If you care more about having people read it, write on social media.

by krapht 6y ago

specialp 6y ago

Facebook makes your content virtually inaccessible and discoverable from those outside Facebook. They are the opposite of the way things were on the open web. Medium "is easy" but they are gradually asking more and more of people visiting too. Twitter is a good platform for streams of thought but it is a terrible "blogging" platform. Having "a series of tweets" does not make for a blog. It is hard to read and terrible. But you are right. People feel they don't need to self host because these things are there. The problem is you then no longer own your content distribution and are at the whim of them walling it off or shutting down.

ordinaryradical 6y ago
I’d really like to see a “Medium minus the bullshit” service. Those pages are so full of js garbage they just feel awful to read and most of the interactions Medium tries to lead you toward are even more painful.
- christiansakai 6y ago
  I’m curious. Have any company or anyone implemented something like this? Basically let people blog and let author themselves pay (instead of being paid by ads) subscription fee to pay cloud machine that hosts their content. I think something does exist in Ethereum platform but why it doesn’t exist out there anywhere else.
  - DarrenDev 6y ago
    Wordpress.com is exactly this. But it's not new and trendy.
  - dotmanish 6y ago
    Letting authors pay for hosting/infra is what commercial plans for WordPress.com do.
  - marpstar 6y ago
    Ghost.org offers hosting
  - Nextgrid 6y ago
    I recently checked out Write.as and it fits the bill. It’s a paid blogging platform (the backend is open source so you can self-host). Svbtle is also good if you don’t mind mandatory Google Analytics that you can’t disable (I left the platform because of that). Squarespace can also be used as a blog although it’s more general-purpose than just blogging and a bit more expensive as a result.
  - alisonatwork 6y ago
    LiveJournal has worked this way for decades and still exists.
    - dsr_ 6y ago
      And DreamWidth.org does LJ better in every way.
    - skyfaller 6y ago
      Dreamwidth is the spiritual successor. https://www.dreamwidth.org/ https://www.dreamwidth.org/ LiveJournal went closed source in 2014. It was also bought by Russians, relocated its servers to Russia, and began enforcing Russian law in 2017, which included laws against "gay propaganda", which was when me and my remaining friends abandoned the service for good.
  - sjf 6y ago
    This was the model back in the 2000s before monetization was big on the internet. This is really the key issue, not whether RSS feeds or dead or if it is too hard for people to self-host blogs. The internet has changed a lot in the last ten years. People have realized that popular content has a big monetary potential, and it is far easier now to get compensated (remember when YouTube content creators couldn't monetize?). More content is created as a income source, than out of passion or interest. Search results are gamed by commerical blogs. The average hobby blogger can't compete with that.
- pier25 6y ago
  > Medium minus the bullshit I'm actually working on something with that spirit. https://pluma.cloud/ https://pluma.cloud/ We will put a "subscribe for updates!" form at some point. You can follow us on Twitter though: https://twitter.com/plumacloud https://twitter.com/plumacloud
  - naravara 6y ago
    >I'm actually working on something with that spirit. Sincere question, not trying to be snarky. Since much (though not all) of the bullshit in Medium is their weak attempts at monetization, what's the bullshit-free alternative business plan to sustain and scale pluma over the long term?
    - pier25 6y ago
      Since we won't track users, sell data, or use ads... the only ethical option is having paying customers. If you look at Ghost, WPEngine, etc, there are a lot of people willing to pay for being able to blog independently. We are betting that within that market there is a niche of people that want to do it as easily as possible, which I think is Medium's best feature.
- agustif 6y ago
  As an everyday sufferer of the Medium bullshit, I've this on my idea bucket list, just never got to actually build it.

Grimm1 6y ago

Right but this creates a new issue, those platforms can moderate what you can say, and not every controversial statement is wrong or bad, but to avoid liability these platforms moderate it away. Then the other related issue is on the chance that what wasn't previously controversial becomes controversial they can go back and scrub older posts. Hosting your own blog protects you from this. They have offered a lot of benefits but they also have the ability to censor.

petercooper 6y ago

Self-hosting doesn't solve the biggest problem of blogging - which is that nobody will read your work. I started blogging in 1999 (and sadly there are the Wayback Machine archives to prove how juvenile I was!) and it was either self host or use Blogger. Discoverability was pretty interesting. Most blogs' traffic didn't come from search engines (Google existed but it was pretty much geeks only) or platforms, but from other blogs whether by being referenced in a post, via a sidebar link, or via a webring or similar device. Getting over 100 visitors a day to your blog would be a big deal! Getting other bloggers' attention via linking to them was a big part of things or leaving comments on their blog. These things barely move the needle anymore. While I have a lot of nostalgia for those days, I think there's actually a lot of other ways to be discovered now. Sites like Hacker News, Reddit, Lobsters, Designer News, etc. provide opportunities to be found within various sub-communities. Most people have Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social profiles on which they can share their links, often findable via hashtags people are monitoring. There are 1001 email newsletters that are always seeking out interesting things to link to. So, I dunno, is discovery really a problem nowadays? I don't think it is, but maybe I'm too "in the game" to see the problems people are having with it. If anything, I think there's just too much to do nowadays and we're really competing with there being 100x more people online than 20 years ago.

noobaccount 6y ago
I used to like the stuff I’m reading and now I don’t. The stuff everybody is reading has gotten very extra. So discoverability is a problem.
- petercooper 6y ago
  You bring up a good point I hadn't really thought about. I was thinking purely about discoverability in terms of the blogger's perspective rather than the reader. You're right, unless you're already following the people who are broadcasting their blogs in all of these various places or live on Reddit/Hacker News/etc., you're going to struggle to find them more now than ever before.

blablabla123 6y ago

To me it's more that Blogs vanished and the people that spent time with it moved their attention onto different media, especially Twitter. Both exploring and maintaining blogs is an effort, and I think what's left are tech blogs and blogs attached to news or magazine websites that are written by professional Journalists. Medium and Youtube also seems more like something for people who spent a lot of effort on this. I think most people resorted to platforms for hosting the blogs. Not sure if it's so important if many people read something as long as it's interesting for some people.

vlkr 6y ago

The bloggers went to places where the eyeballs are. If you read a good book, make photo and post it with a comment on instagram. You will get much more reaction than with a blogpost on your private blog. Same for forums. If you are looking for a community with a special interest you will have more luck to find an active facebook group than a independent forum/message board somewhere else.

secabeen 6y ago

The challenge with platforms is that they have big incentives to push small, regular updates and posts, to increase impressions. Thoughtful, considered content and engaged responses are lost in the noise.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

larsrc 6y ago

If you think the biggest problem of blogging is that nobody will read your work, you're not blogging, you're angling for popularity (or ad dollars, which comes out to the same in the end). If you have something interesting to write, write it in a blog. If you care more about having people read it, write on social media.