
Ask HN: Why don't you have a blog? - jlelse
Many Hacker News readers and contributors have the technical skills to run their own blog and post their opinions. But instead they prefer to use Twitter or other social networks. Why is this so? Is it the effort?
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qppo
I don't want an extremely public record of my personal opinions or thoughts
today, because I know they're going to change tomorrow.

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csixty4
A long time ago, I had a personal blog and posted to it regularly. Nobody read
it. I rarely got comments.

Some of my wife's friends wanted to read it, so one of them imported the RSS
feed into Livejournal and I discovered it one day. Surprise, there were lots
of comments on "my" LJ account and people upset I wasn't answering their
questions.

That was a lesson to me that owning the place I publish content isn't as
important as being where my audience is, at least if I want people to read it.
At the time¸ it was Livejournal. Today, it's social media.

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krapp
I used to have a blog, and I miss it, but I realized long ago that no one
gives a shit about anything I have to say. Still have a domain, there's
nothing on it, though.

Sometimes I think I'd like to start one up again but, you know, people expect
blogs to be put out by experts now - I just did it because I enjoy writing but
there's no point if no one is reading, and the people who do expect more from
you than you're willing or able to give.

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burntoutfire
I don't think I have anything particularly interesting or novel enough to say,
and I don't want to add to the deluge of mediocre, self-promoting crap that
the already Internet is... I hope to soon (1-2 years from now) have enough
time to pursue interesting and novel side projects - I could see myself
documenting them on a blog then.

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8bitsrule
IME, blogs that develop a readership worth the time and effort (up to the
author, really) are devoted to one topic or a narrow range of related topics.
I'm sure we all know of a few. But people's time is limited, and competition
for their attention is fierce.

If -who- you reach is more important than -how many- you reach, then blogs
might be the right route. I'd bet that Socrates was seldom surrounded by a
crowd. Blogging doesn't require many technical skills, but it does demand that
what we say is valued by those we can only hope will be back ... and that they
have a way to contribute.

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SStanley
I don't thank blogging is over cause it is currently the best way to
explain/understand a long concept, Twitter is, in my opinion juste for quick
info related to the present

I expect it to change in the futur, Medium or Quora seem to do a really good
job to understand concept but in my opinion there is something meeting ?

I had a blog back in the day, I create it to mostly for free lead, but it take
too much time to have effect and when you got it you can decrease in rank,
losing all the work you made

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softwaredoug
On my blog I frankly don’t want/expect comments. It’s intentionally a solitary
space for just me. But here it’s like being at an interesting party.

OTOH a blog is more SEO friendly, and a better signpost to leave for others on
the broader Internet whereas these comments are temporal.

The blog is suited for longer form content with visuals, headers, and
structure. The hacker news comment is suited for short and sweet insights

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kgraves
> ...But instead they prefer to use Twitter or other social networks. Why is
> this so? Is it the effort?

Discovery. Go to where your audience is.

It is much much easier on platforms such as Twitter, Medium, (Substack?) etc,
not so much on your own site and blog.

You can "get to market", garner an audience and submit a post quicker on these
platforms.

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davidajackson
I build apps and maintain a blog for whatever app I'm currently working on.
For people that might want me to contract, I show them an app on the store
I've worked on, and that works well for me. Will probably make a personal blog
at some point but haven't had time.

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psyclobe
My own life is stressful enough, without the all seeing criticizing eye of a
world audience.

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jlelse
I responded to some of the comments in my latest blog post:
[https://jlelse.blog/posts/why-no-blog/](https://jlelse.blog/posts/why-no-
blog/)

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non-entity
Cant think of a good name / domain and no idea how get readers anyway.

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speedgoose
Before I gave up with my blog, many years ago, it had very few readers unless
I was doing SEO bullshit or I was spending hours actively promoting it.

In the beginning the effort was fine because it was fun. I even developed it
from scratch in Rails, it was the time of these "write a blog with rails in 5
minutes" articles (it took me more time to have something I liked). Blogs were
also very popular and you had communities of bloggers. But when social
networks replaced blogs, people stopped using RSS feeds or simply visiting
blogs.

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karmakaze
I posted to a blog for a while. I didn't like the disorganized one-off
isolated bits of content it produced. With enough content a word cloud could
be useful but wasn't what I wanted to make.

Now I post to a personal GitBook site which is more of a personal wiki than a
blog. I like the output. I wish I'd started this way from early in my online-
era career. Each post aims to either be in story form, or a to-the-point how-
to which I know I'll be referring to and trust.

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cik
Ultimately I prefer sharing my thoughts, opinions and information with people
who are part of my life, as opposed to the internet as a whole.

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akater
• I don't want to admin a server.

• I don't understand what does it mean “to own a domain name”, what kind of ID
is it tied to.

• I'd have to write a spam-resilient js-free https-free comments system. It'd
take time, it'd have to be based on PGP, and in the end nobody would use it.

So I just worship my Fediverse Instance Admin Deity instead, for now.

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askafriend
I would rather engage in discussion rather than publish monologues.

This is why I like HN/Twitter/etc.

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lappet
I have a blog but I am unsure how to share & receive feedback in 2020. The
online world seems to be trending towards micro-blogging, photos and videos
and I worry if people take the time to read long form blog posts.

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Zelphyr
I don’t have a blog or Twitter or Facebook anymore and I’m fine with it. I
never really got anything out of it. In fact, it was all just me complaining
which doesn’t do anyone any good. I’m happier not having those channels.

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eb0la
My wordpress blog was hacked sometime after my daughter was born about two
years ago. Didn't have time to update it so I had to shut it down. I'll blog
again. Just don't know when ;-)

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anotheryou
It's unrealistic I'll gather a bigger readership without much effort. For
comparison: I have 6 twitter followers I think...

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Raed667
I had one, no one read it. low numbers compared to effort made me stop writing
in it.

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throwaway180118
Anxiety to publish

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alexmingoia
Twitter _is_ a blog.

~~~
quickthrower2
A microblogging platform

