
Kill your blog - narendra
http://www.wired.com/entertainment/theweb/magazine/16-11/st_essay
======
randrews
A dissenting opinion:

Writing a blog helps you organize your thoughts, improves your writing skills,
and teaches you to make good arguments (and recognize bad ones).

None of that requires having an audience. At least an audience larger than
your friends and coworkers.

If you like to write, don't stop writing because it's not "where the buzz is
at". There's more to life than following trends.

~~~
acgourley
Well said. In addition to that, I use my blog to host content I hope people
will find via google, like how-tos or coding gotchas. I'm not going to post a
coding trick to my facebook account, even if it has more active readers.

~~~
randrews
Exactly. Some content, like status updates, is perfect for Twitter or
Facebook, but this article seems to assume that that's all anyone uses blogs
for.

Please god say it ain't so. I would like to think that people who keep blogs
(at least the subset thereof that also read Wired) tend to write more
interesting things in them, and I can't imagine that being replaced by 140
characters (this notwithstanding: <http://twitter.com/_why/statuses/881768089>
)

~~~
alex_c
If this is actually a ploy to get pointless blogs out of Google's index and
hidden behind Facebook's garden wall, then I'm all for it!

------
cstejerean
And stop writing books people, it's so 1900. Surely you can convey everything
you'd write about in a series of 140 char twitter messages.

~~~
unalone
I think that books _have_ lost prominence, though. People have found that
there are mediums that convey their messages far better.

The book isn't dead. But it's not as used now as it was in the past. People
with visions and dreams find that it's easier to make movies, or form bands.
Some people write, yes, but the book is not as dominant as it was in 1900. The
same stands for the play and the concerto.

Blogs still have their uses. But now, things exist that work better for a lot
of people. Twitter and Tumblr come to mind immediately.

~~~
jamesbritt
" People with visions and dreams find that it's easier to make movies, or form
bands. Some people write, yes, but the book is not as dominant as it was in
1900. The same stands for the play and the concerto."

Any references to back this up?

I bet it's easier to self-publish a book than it is to make a movie.

~~~
unalone
I self-published a book in my senior year of high school, so yes. That's
possible.

However, I referred to the set of genres overall. The book certainly is not
dead. However, it takes up less of the "fine arts" market proportionally than
it did a hundred years ago, and that's because other genres exist that allow
people certain other freedoms.

It is easier to form a band now than it was a hundred years ago. A hundred
years ago, it would have been extremely difficult, and there was less of a
popular focus. There wasn't the insane level of attention to rock stars back
then. And motion pictures didn't exist at all. Neither did animated pictures
or video games.

This is applicable to the blogging situation as follows: 5 years ago, if you
wanted to write online, a blog was the best way to go. Now? Not necessarily.
Now you can Tweet if that serves your purpose, or you can maintain a videolog
or a tumblelog. Many friends of mine abandoned their blogs for Tumblr for
precisely that reason: it fits their needs. And yes, that's still technically
a blog, but the format has changed. There are different rules and there is
focus on different things. It's entirely different from maintaining a blog on
Wordpress or Movable Type.

Nowadays, I don't see very many interesting posts from personal blogs. The
blog posts I DO find interesting come from only a few places. The attention
has changed to a variety of different mediums. Look at r/bestof/ on Reddit:
suddenly, there are people who come to attention entirely through metaposting.
Or, to take my example, I now link to my HN threads on my site and I've
abandoned my blog for essays. It lets me build up a better relation between
content that I write on the fly and content that builds up, that I slowly
formulate and revise.

Of course the book isn't dead, or even dying, though in my opinion it's been
50 years since the last truly revolutionary piece of pure literature
(Beckett). However, now if you've got a mind for expression there are more
writing-based venues available. 100 years ago, you either wrote poetry, wrote
novels, or wrote plays. Now you have lyric writing, film-writing, and game
writing available. That fits what people want much more.

Look at the invention of science fiction: when movies first appeared,
literature stopped dealing with sci-fi largely for several decades, because
the minds that were attracted to sci-fi were attracted to cinema. The same
thing is happening with video games right now: not all but many writers are
joining on the science fiction game bandwagon. And so, if I were a game
designer looking at a bunch of college students interested in science fiction,
I might very well advise the students that novel writing might NOT be the best
way to go on with sci-fi. Some people would ignore that and go on and try, but
with so many other venues available, there's less of a pressure for books.
That's how I see this article: it's an argument that a blog isn't necessary
anymore. That doesn't mean people won't like it, and use it, but it means that
blogging is no longer the primary source of content on the Internet.

~~~
dmix
_"I self-published a book in my senior year of high school."_

I'm curious, what did you write about? Fiction/non-fiction? Still writing or
just hacking?

Putting a book together at that age is a respectable achievement.

~~~
unalone
It was a novel. I published it through CreateSpace, so it could be found on
Amazon; it's online at Scribd at <http://www.scribd.com/doc/3319195/gstepl>.

I still write, though I haven't written anything as ambitiously. My start-up
is one that focuses on creative writers who want to learn to write at a more
professional level, so it lets me get away with doing both. And I'll probably
be writing something for NaNoWriMo in November: if I like that, I'll spend a
little bit revising and seeing if any publishers are interested.

The two things go nicely together, because with literature you get used to
putting things together haphazardly until they work: hacking gives you a more
utilitarian approach to doing things. I find that when I'm in the middle of
programming, I write better - if that makes any sense to you.

------
henning
If you want to share medium-sized amounts of timely information, blogs and
screencasts are the best conduits that I know of.

As for "expressing yourself" with Flickr, Facebook, and Twitter, photos,
throwing pillows at people, and 140 character ephemera do not substitute for a
solid, well-edited blog post.

~~~
adnam
"The time it takes to craft sharp, witty blog prose is better spent expressing
yourself on Flickr, Facebook, or Twitter."

One word: SUBMARINE.

------
tlrobinson
What a linkbait title. Blogs aren't going anywhere, people are just figuring
out what's appropriate on their blog versus Twitter/Facebook/[insert social
network site of month here].

Personally, I see my blog and Twitter feed as two _very_ different types of
communication. Twitter, etc is great for quick little comments, sharing links,
short updates of what's going on my life, questions to friends, etc, whereas
my blog is good for more in depth posts like technical projects I'm working
on, longer opinion pieces, tips and tricks, etc.

Similarly, I hate reading individual's blogs that simply talk about their
boring day to day life, but 140 character chunks of that stuff is ok. On the
flip side, there's no way to fit anything substantial (like my typical blog
post) into 140 characters.

 _"A stand-alone commentator can't keep up with a team of pro writers cranking
out up to 30 posts a day."_

My approach is to not to subscribe to these kind of high volume "professional"
blogs, but rather lots of little low traffic blogs.

I figure if there's something truly important posted on one of these mega-
blogs my peers will inevitably post about it (on their blog, Twitter, or
Facebook) and I'll find out about it anyway. Plus I'll see a huge variety of
posts and little gems that never make it up to the big guys, rather than a
zillion "xyz company released abc cell phone" posts on Engadget. I'm a gadget
fiend but that shit gets old after awhile.

So don't let Wired and the mega-blogs discourage you from blogging. If you
write something interesting the big guys will link to you anyway. My blog has
been linked to from Slashdot, Daring Fireball, Ajaxian, TUAW, etc over the
last year, and I only post about once a week when I have something I think is
at least moderately interesting.

</rant>

------
raganwald
Kill your blog? Say it aint so!

[http://weblog.raganwald.com/2008/07/brief-history-of-
dangero...](http://weblog.raganwald.com/2008/07/brief-history-of-dangerous-
ideas.html)

------
IsaacSchlueter
I think Paul Boutin might have a crush on me.

 _some anonymous troll named r0rschach or foohack_

Um... "foohack" is only used by one troll, afaik, and I'm not anonymous. :P
<http://tr.im/h9f>

This is the same Paul Boutin who was so impressed by my resume.
<http://tr.im/h9g>

~~~
daveambrose
Was there ever a follow-up story to the VW post on your resume?

~~~
IsaacSchlueter
No, not that I know of. Though I did get pinged randomly by a yahoo employee
from china who saw the story and looked me up in the corporate directory.

------
fallentimes
_"Cut-rate journalists and underground marketing campaigns now drown out the
authentic voices of amateur wordsmiths."_

 _"Paul Boutin (paul@valleywag.com) is a correspondent for the Silicon Valley
gossip site Valleywag."_

This made me giggle even though I sometimes view Valleywag as having more
journalistic integrity than TC.

------
MikeCapone
They're just trying to be sensationalistic.

To each his own. If you prefer the blog format, by all means keep blogging. If
you prefer twitter, go do that..

~~~
benbeltran
exactly what I was thinking... Soo, just because some people stop blogging and
move to other platforms everyone should? Screw that.

Of course, if you intend to use your blog to make some dinero and pay some of
the bills, it's probably not going to work... but neither will twitter or
facebook for that matter. If you just want to express yourself, use whatever
you want and whatever your public will use.

And can't you have a blog AND twitter, facebook, etc?

------
fallentimes
This is awful advice. Our blog has, on some days, received more traffic than
our actual site. In addition to generating sales, it has also helped us
substantially with SEO and connecting with our users.

This is quite possibly the worst advice I've ever seen on HN in recent memory.
Just because you can use facebook/twitter et al doesn't mean you can't have a
blog. They aren't mutually exclusive. One word of caution, if you're spending
tons of time on your blog with very little to show for it, maybe consider
getting rid of it or cut down your post frequency.

------
ivankirigin
Gary V. had great advice: "people ask what social networking tools I should
use ... twitter, jaiku, etc. The answer? Use all of them"

There is nothing exclusive about twitter & blogging. You'll note those with
the biggest personal brands and most followers are often bloggers. This is
because facebook and twitter are both bad at content/person discovery.

Blogging is a good way to let people find out who you are.

~~~
unalone
Ugh. I dislike that advice very much.

I'm not a fan of people who use social networking to advertise. I know there
are practical benefits, but the idealist in me wishes that people wouldn't
pick up media just to abuse it. Some things are great: I remember there was a
comment here about somebody who complained about Comcast on Twitter and got an
instant response. But I've seen too many people who use Twitter and Jaiku and
Tumblr to post links back to their content and that's that, and I hate that.

Of course, the idealist in me thinks that you shouldn't advertise in every
venue possible, that you should work until you've got something so useful that
word-of-mouth brings people in, and that's not entirely practical either.

~~~
fallentimes
Disclaimer: TicketStumbler uses Twitter, Facebook and Blogging

What if you have people come to you instead of vice versa? For example, you
never follow anyone on twitter you make people follow you. I agree that the
spammers are a huge problem, but I think some of these tools can be used for
good.

I raged about Comcast on Twitter yesterday and they haven't done anything.
Bastards.

~~~
unalone
The ones you mentioned are okay if you're using them decently. I can see why
TicketStumbler would benefit from Twitter, absolutely. And Facebook and blogs
are different: blogs help you reach out to your current users, and Facebook
Pages are built to let you attract fans. I guess that's not the misusage I was
thinking about: I referred more to the spammers and the people who sign up for
every service imaginable just to attract people. (The owner of AllFacebook,
which I used to write for, did that a lot on Twitter, and it always just
seemed slightly wannabe to me.)

------
lemonysnicket
So a guy who presumably makes his living on being a professional blogger is
lamenting the lost of the personal touch in blogs... hmm

------
phil_KartMe
writing a blog can demonstrate your subject matter expertise to investors,
employees, and business partners. philmichaelson.com has very small
readership, but the leads its generated have already been worth the effort.

Twitter, Flickr, and Facebook don't allow you to share the same length and
quality of content outside your friend network

------
brlewis
He assumes blogs make media hard to upload. Posterous breaks that rule. Then
there's my site, OurDoings, where the photos you upload form the skeleton of a
blog, backdated by when the photos were taken. You can leave it as just photos
or fill it in with as much writing as you want.

------
MicahWedemeyer
Please do quit if your goal is to bask in the adoration of other bloggers.

If you've got useful information or clever insight, by all means continue. For
god's sake, I wouldn't know how to program these days without all the "5 steps
to XXX" blog posts out there.

------
senihele
Why are they mutually exclusive? Seems like they each work best when supported
by everything else. The defining characteristic of 2008 is not twitter, as it
was blogging in 2004, but rather the growing interconnectivity of all web
services.

------
dimitar
What is this blog thing? A site with a RSS feed? The BBC website has RSS and
news aren't posted in batches. So is it a blog? Nope.

Isn't a blog supposed to be personal? The mentioned sites aren't really blogs,
so the article is irrelevant.

Blogs still matter when it comes to details that aren't discussed in the
media. In my native language blog posts and forum discussions are among the
top results and I often learn more and understand my country better from this
content than from the PR-dominated media.

I am glad that some of the bloggers I read have started micro-blogging - I am
not interested in reading what they ate for dinner last night.

I like traditional personal webpages.

------
mattmaroon
He makes the mistake of thinking there's some limited number of blog readers
and you have to compete against TechCrunch for them.

Also Calcanis may have quit blogging, but his posts now end up on top 10 blogs
every time.

------
nocivus
I totally disagree. I don't see the point in stopping to write web log entries
just because twitter or facebook exist. I do not write on my web log in search
of some form of hype. The reason I do write on it, is to serve two purposes:
To keep track of stuff that I know I will eventually forget (and it will be
extra fun to re-read it later :)), and to communicate some form of information
to my friends and family.

Maybe, now that I think of it, it might be more interesting to start storing
carrier pigeons or messages inside bottles, hmmmm...

------
marketer
Although this is a worthy topic to explore, the reasons the article mentions
are are lousy. So what if there are people making a living blogging? Who cares
if Jason Calacanis or Scoble changed their blogging patterns? Who cares about
all the noise in the blogosphere, and competing services like Twitter.

The most valid reason is that blogging is hard, and most people aren't willing
to put forth the effort to make their blogs readable.

------
dmoney
In the programming world, there is a healthy ecosystem of bloggers. If Steve
Yegge switches to Twitter, I quit.

One great thing about the web is that you can structure your content however
you want.

------
awt
How about this: kill your blog if it sucks and no-one reads it and you can't
think of any improvements you could make to get people to read it.

------
markessien
You need your blog, because it's part of your portfolio. It's what people who
want to find out more about you read.

------
rockstar9
clearly a flamebait ...

------
nir
Shiny object!!!

