
Alex Payne, a Twitter engineer, is shutting down his personal blog - boundlessdreamz
http://al3x.net/2010/03/02/hiatus.html
======
josefresco
Someone needs to whip up a quick mad-libs style "I'm quitting blogging" script
that can write these posts for us all.

Also a list of public blog-quitters so we can ridicule them when they change
their minds: [http://calacanis.com/2008/07/11/official-announcement-
regard...](http://calacanis.com/2008/07/11/official-announcement-regarding-my-
retirement-from-blogging/) [http://www.inc.com/magazine/20100301/lets-take-
this-offline....](http://www.inc.com/magazine/20100301/lets-take-this-
offline.html) <http://al3x.net/2010/03/02/hiatus.html>

~~~
decklin
Not reading the linked article I expect, but not reading the one-word summary
in the article's URL?

<http://lmgtfy.com/?q=hiatus>

Edit: to be fair, the title of this submission is misrepresenting.

------
cwilson
Way too much cynicism in this thread! I thought that was a great way to put on
hold a blog I've always enjoyed reading over the last few years.

Congrats and best of luck, Alex.

~~~
raganwald
Way too much indeed. We should remember that blogs are written for an audience
_and that audience may not be HN_. If a post doesn't satisfy us as a
community, the fault is not with the author's composition but with the choice
to submit the link to HN.

A similar thing happened to me when I wrote a rememberence-day post. Some
people reasonably suggested it wasn't Hacker News. I explained why I thought
it was tangentially relevant. There was a discussion about that, but nobody
suggested that I shouldn't have written the post, we were merely discussing
whether it belonged in HN.

I can understand the argument that meta-blogging doesn't belong in HN. But I
don't believe it shouldn't be written in the first place.

------
Willie_Dynamite
So?

Maybe flippant, but that's the nature of the blogging beast. Blogs come and
go, new ones replace old ones and somehow equilibrium is maintained.

~~~
scott_s
The _So?_ is that Alex is a member of our community and some people here will
care about why he chose to stop.

------
Vitaly
an advice to the next person that wants to stop blogging. just stop. really.
don't blog about you wanting to stop. thanks.

~~~
jackowayed
Really? Let's say you're a loyal reader. You have him RSSed, and you get
excited whenever you see his posts show up in your feed reader. How would you
feel if after a month or 2 you said "hm, Alex Payne hasn't blogged in a long
time, wonder what the deal is."

You go to twitter: "@al3x why haven't you been blogging recently?"

"@you I decided to stop blogging"

Wouldn't you wish he had written one final blog post letting you know instead
of waiting for people to figure it out?

To an outsider who just sees his posts occasionally on HN, it may seem dumb,
but it makes more sense for his loyal readers, I assume.

A lot of HN readers and empathize like so: what if pg "just stopped"
writing/publishing essays. Wouldn't you wish he had at least written one last
amazing essay describing his rationale for stopping and letting everyone know?

~~~
al3x
That's pretty much it. I have people who read my blog regularly, and if I
didn't explain why I was taking a break, they'd want to know.

I didn't intend the post to be on HN. I didn't submit the post to HN. I didn't
upvote the post on HN.

------
pmikal
I shut down my blog Jan 1. Privacy is the new sharing.

~~~
al3x
You're joking, but honestly, I really do think there's going to be a wave of
private/closed-community products that counterbalance the boom in highly
social technology over the past few years.

~~~
uggedal
Like <http://pinboard.in> \- "Social bookmarking for introverts"

------
gyardley
"When we started dating, marriage was the furthest thing from my mind. True
love will sneak up on you. Let it."

True and beautifully put.

------
scott_s
Alex, I know you contribute on HN, and I'd just like to say I think some of
the people here are being rude.

With that said, some (unsolicited, I know) advice for if you want to get back
into blogging. Try getting feedback from your peers before publishing
something, then use their input to edit. That should improve the writing, of
course, but it can also indicate to you if the ideas you want to get across
are apparent _to the readers you care about_.

Not everyone who reads your essays will even be willing to meet you on your
own terms. Getting feedback from peers - as opposed to random people who feel
it's okay to dismiss soemthing out-of-hand - may help with the feeling that
your writing doesn't provide the insight you want it to.

This is, I think, closer to how PG approaches his essays. Notice, too, that we
don't consider those blogs, but essays that pop up periodically.

~~~
al3x
Getting feedback on posts before I publish has been valuable. If and when I
get back to blogging, I'll be soliciting that peer feedback for each and every
post. Great advice. Thanks!

------
avdempsey
This is Alex's best post since he bashed SF. All is forgiven, sorry for
getting unintentionally inflamed!

------
dschobel
_Of course, I’ll be tweeting away. Over time, I’m coming to realize what sort
of messages I can communicate effectively via Twitter, and what sort I can’t.
Twitter works least well for me when I try to cram big arguments down to 140
characters._

But isn't twitter the medium which caused him the most grief (the techcrunch
manufactured-drama of last week) specifically when he tried to convey a big
idea in too short a space?

------
eam
I wonder if Joel Spolsky had some influence on Alex. I really enjoyed his
blog.

~~~
mikedouglas
I'm sure the blatant misreading of his tweet by techcrunch last week had
something to do with it.

<http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/27/new-twitter-features/>

~~~
zaidf
I'd call it anything but "blatant misreading." Everyone knows the massive hype
surrounding Twitter's api. There are companies who've raised millions banking
on twitter api. While I think that's bad strategy for those companies, I don't
blame a bunch of folks with millions on the line to panic at a tweet from a
_twitter employee_ that threatens their existence. If I'm one of the companies
that depends on twitter, I'd want to know everything behind that tweet.

It's forgivable if Alex overlooked that perspective but this is by no means
techcrunch's fault. They reported what he tweeted.

Partner relationships are very sensitive. I have a product that is being sold
by a reseller who has two sales people pushing it. One of the sales people
heard a rumor from somewhere(a classmate) that we might be selling directly in
the market so he would have to compete with our in-house sales staff for the
same business. He contacted us in panic. We had to assure him that while we do
plan to do in-house sales, that is for other markets. Point is, when you have
_good_ partnerships that are not just fluff, you also need solid
communication.

If developers didn't care about the twitter api, they wouldn't give a shit
about this tweet. Because they care about it, twitter should be very sensitive
to how they communicate with developers.

~~~
larrywright
>> It's forgivable if Alex overlooked that perspective but this is by no means
techcrunch's fault. They reported what he tweeted.

No, they didn't. They took what he tweeted, gave it a sensationalist headline,
and vomited out a few paragraphs of text designed to drive traffic to their
site. That is most definitely not reporting.

>> twitter should be very sensitive to how they communicate with developers.

Alex tweeted his opinion about some cool things to come. This is not
"communicating with developers", it's making an offhand comment. Twitter
communicates through developers through a mailing list, and several official
accounts (@twitterapi, for example), not through the personal tweets of its
employees.

I don't think it's Alex's responsibility to analyze in advance how every thing
he tweets might be interpreted. TechCrunch and Silicon Alley are to blame for
the over-sensationalized writing.

~~~
zaidf
_I don't think it's Alex's responsibility to analyze in advance how every
thing he tweets might be interpreted._

Let's just say we have a serious disagreement there. He essentially tweeted
about private future plans of twitter, something I'm pretty sure you cannot
do. If you are an employee and you tweet about strategy, you have a
responsibility to think from all angles. Otherwise you risk hurting the
company you are working for out of negligence--never a good thing in any
employee.

~~~
larrywright
Were he revealing something important, I might agree with you. He tweeted,
basically, "there's some cool new stuff coming soon". There's almost no
information in that. Additionally, I've seen similar things from other twitter
employees.

This was nothing until Techcrunch put their spin on it.

------
joshu
I think that blogging, especially the feedback you get from a successful post,
tend to be seductive. So you continually think about that next blog post, even
when you have nothing to say.

This is why I've decided to just write to get something out of my head and
there's no other outlet.

------
kvs
Let me just say just because we have lot of ideas doesn't mean they all need
to crystalize. I've learned that I might be thinking of an idea for a month or
some whereas someone else might have thought about it for four months, tired &
failed so they will criticize the idea and drive it in a different direction.
Not every idea needs to crystalize.

I do agree that blogging every other day is not going to help either. I would
say blog like Dustin Curtis. Treat every post like a book.

As for my street cred: I quit blogging in 2001 after 3-4 years of blogging.
Now, thinking of doing what I just proposed above. :-)

------
k7d
2010.. the year of blogquiting? :)

~~~
dschobel
and facebook quitting: <http://www.seppukoo.com/>

I wonder if the twitter guys are concerned about the logical next step in this
reversal of over-exposure.

~~~
RyanMcGreal
Heh. I'm seriously considering quitting twitter right now.

------
davidw
I wonder if he'll last through the winter in Portland.

~~~
al3x
I grew up on the East Coast. I can deal with harsh winters. Plus, I'm only
happy when it rains.

~~~
davidw
The winters in the Pacific Northwest aren't "harsh", just long, bleak and
gray. After a few winters in Innsbruck, Austria, I actually learned that I
don't mind the snow and intense cold. However, it rarely snows in Portland, it
just rains, and drizzles, and drips, and mists and then starts the cycle anew.

I guess if you like the rain, though, that's the right place for you
(surpassed only by Washington's Olympic Peninsula). As a native Oregonian,
though, I think you're crazy to like the rain - you can't do much of anything
outdoors without getting really miserably wet.

I can see getting out of the bay area, on the other hand - Portland is
certainly more livable. Good luck!

------
mdg
Congratulations on getting married.

------
marshallp
Perhaps these tech blogger/entrepreneurs will get round to doing real work
now. Streams of messages (twitter) and bug tracking (frog creek) is great n
all, but how about something with more than a handful of features?

~~~
phsr
Because everyone should make a product with every feature imaginable! Why
would you need anything else? Feature bloat doesn't hurt any product!

~~~
marshallp
It'd be nice if the tech industry got innovative and solved real human
problems - you know, like getting computers to do the work of humans.

Reinventions of the telegraph (twitter/facebook) and operating system
(apple/android/chromeos) is all i'm seeing these days.

~~~
bugs
As much as I hate twitter it most definitely is not a reinvention of the
telegraph

For the operating system snark I for one am glad the world isn't still using
apple II's

If you want the problems solved start working on it yourself it isn't other
peoples burden.

~~~
marshallp
Twitter doesn't do my dishes, or cure cancer. It just lets people communicate,
like did the telegraph 200 years ago.

Operating system snark - beneath os x and android is unix, invented over 40
years ago.

I do work on it myself, but i'm only one man. If the industry set its goals
higher that would make a real difference, and put more money in its pocket.

~~~
nostrademons
Your dishwasher does your dishes, and chemotherapy cures cancer.

It'd just be nice if my dishwasher did my dishes _better_ , and chemotherapy
cured cancer _better_ (and less painfully).

Kinda like how Twitter lets people communicate _better_. New products are
almost always a refinement of some existing product. The ones that aren't tend
to elicit a big "Huh?" reaction from the marketplace.

~~~
marshallp
I'm sure the tech industry, the self proclaimed vanguard of innovation, can do
better than turn blogging into 140 characters and call it a day.

------
sker
I can't believe this is on the front page and at number 2. Hacker News has
officially jumped the shark for me. Yes, down vote me all you want.

~~~
pg
I feel like I've read this exact same comment so many times over the past 3
years. If you think something's off topic, would you please just flag it
quietly, as we ask in the guidelines?

~~~
sker
That's what I usually do, but this time is different. This marks the end of HN
as I knew it (for me anyway), and I felt the need to express how I feel about
it. You don't just lose something you cherish and stay quiet, that's a very
difficult thing to do. You won't be hearing this sort of complaints from me
anymore.

~~~
pg
Well, if it's any consolation, it was just an illusion that the site was good
before. HN officially jumped the shark about three months after you signed up:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=244937>

It's interesting that this too was a complaint about yet another story of a
type that there had recently been a lot of. That seems to be the most common
thing that causes people to decide that this time, HN has really jumped the
shark.

Sometimes sites get onto themes. Lately one theme has been prominent bloggers
who are quitting blogging. Don't worry, though. There probably won't be that
many more.

~~~
vital101
There will always be people that don't like a site's content. If that is the
case, I feel they should try to help add better content. Hacker News is still
a small enough community where the actions of 1 person can be felt throughout
the whole thing.

Also, a fair amount of people seem to care that this is happening, so why
wouldn't it get on the front page? It seems to me that the submission
guidelines are somewhat flexible to account for this sort of thing.

