

Blogging’s Bright Future - jimiwen
http://stratechery.com/2015/bloggings-bright-future/

======
Udo
" _It is absolutely true that the old Sullivan-style – tens of posts a day,
mostly excerpts and links, with regular essays in immediate response to
ongoing news – is mostly over._ "

I'm having trouble finding a concrete argument in the article about what, if
private content creation is indeed dead, is actually left to blog about.
According to the article, a large part of where blogging moved on to seems to
be mere social link aggregation and propagation.

Meanwhile, we're reading this on a blog. In fact, here on HN, we're reading
blog posts all the time. It seems to me we consume a lot of essays which,
shockingly, have not in fact been written by media companies.

I think what's changed about blogging has nothing to do with all that.
Instead, it's all largely down to the fact that we moved from automated
content aggregation to a human-powered filter. The death of the RSS reader
itself was probably in equal parts due to an unfavorable signal-to-noise
ratio, context switching costs associated with using the app itself, and
social media platforms swooping in as an all-in-one replacement. Google
abandoning the platform might also have played a role, though it's difficult
to discern cause and effect in this case. HN has replaced Google Reader for
me, and I'm sure Twitter and Facebook have done the same for other people. But
we're still consuming blog content at the end of the day.

~~~
monkbent
I think you either 1) didn't read the whole article or 2) completely misread
it. The point is the meat remains, even as all the excerpt and link stuff has
mostly moved to Twitter.

~~~
Udo
_> The point is the meat remains, even as all the excerpt and link stuff has
mostly moved to Twitter._

I thought I addressed that by saying:

" _According to the article, a large part of where blogging moved on to seems
to be mere social link aggregation and propagation._ "

 _Update_ : I just realized you're the author of the article; I'm sorry you
feel misrepresented, that wasn't my intention. I think my main problem is
reconciling sensationalist statements like ' _blogs as streams of regular
essays are mostly over_ ' with points that follow later on the basis of ' _the
meaty content remains relevant_ '. You might argue that I put the emphasis on
something other than what was intended; maybe the central claim was ' _link
blogs are over_ ', but in that case there would be very little need to have
that particular discussion at all.

~~~
monkbent
That was my only point. Sullivan type 40 post a day blogs don't make much
sense anymore, but the entire premise of my article is that blogs still matter
and can still be a business.

Cheers

------
mbrock
It's a very interesting topic.

 _" Instead of blogging, people are posting to Tumblr, tweeting, pinning
things to their board, posting to Reddit, Snapchatting, updating Facebook
statuses, Instagramming, and publishing on Medium…"_

From my perspective, what was really interesting and novel about the
"blogosphere(s)" was the dimension that I'll call _textual collaboration._

The ideal of the blog resonates with ideals like "civic engagement," "the
public sphere," and other such somewhat high-minded stuff—in a way that seems
rather neutered by those other media.

From that list, Medium and reddit seem closest. But when I use Medium, I feel
like what I am doing is providing free content to a startup. I don't feel like
I am just sharing text with friends and strangers.

On reddit, I do often feel like I am simply sharing words with others in a
collaborative and open way, because there is less of a focus on the author as
an individual "brand;" there are fewer swanky photos of Moleskines and
espressos; there is more vivid discussion and real conversation.

Blogging, I think, was (and to some degree is) a balance act between public
and private. Also a balance between publishing and drafting. A balance between
permanence and ephemerality. A balance between monologue and dialogue. And so
on.

From my perspective, given that I focus on "textual collaboration," it's quite
interesting to look at, e.g., GitHub. Yes, people are mostly working on code
together, but it's done in an interesting and quite fresh way.

Wikis, too. That never really took off, did it? Could it?

~~~
jimiwen
good take!

in the balance of public and private, production and consumption, monologue
and conversations...

how can we design for better signal-to-noise ratio? like a good sound engineer
putting the right amount of compression and reverb to sit in the mix as
intended.

------
replicatorblog
[https://twitter.com/hunterwalk/status/562278398513266689](https://twitter.com/hunterwalk/status/562278398513266689)

According to Hunter Walk, Stratechery has 2,000 subscribers. At $100 a pop,
that's a $200K salary, not counting any consulting, paid speaking, etc.
Blogging might not be the buzzword that it once was, but Ben's story shows
there's still opportunity. The big difference now is that it's probably more
of the lifestyle business variety rather than the previous world where people
saw it at venture scale.

