HN Explorer

Ask HN: Why are there fewer non-tech personal blogs? (athletes', architects')

4 points by kernelsoe ↗ HN
As far as I could read, there seems to be very few individual blogs unlike a developer's or programmer's one. In my country, about 70% of population use Facebook everyday (which have already quite problematic). There are short and long posts from electricians or from a local chef which I and/or many people enjoy reading. But the obvious problem is these posts are behind the walled-garden as they don't have personal websites (am thinking about creating one soon).

Although the web seems to be easier for posting knowledgeable essays compare to 2000s, why are there fewer personal websites and some recent human knowledge (opinions ...) are behind wall-garden?

It's quite easy for a tech-savvy guy to start running a jamstack in no time. But is that becoming really easy for an accountant or a barista? to share their experience as easy as hitting tweet button or What's on your mind textarea?

18 comments

[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 50.4 ms ] thread
TomMarius
In my country there is at least 10x political blogs than technical ones. They're using local simplistic blog platforms (usually hosted by news sites) that let you have your own third level domain.
kernelsoe
I see. Having your own third level (or) subdomain with file hosting seems to be better than walled-garden. Let me ask the same question => why are there fewer posts about individually motivated essays rather than SEO (or political blogs)?

Making money from blog is not a first priority (making money by selling subscriptions or teaching courses is completely ok for readers, imao as long as the writer is motivated for sharing)

TomMarius
These blog systems hosted by the news sites do not have FTP access, there is a simplistic web interface that you use to publish articles and set up categories/tags. There are "freehostings" that give you a 3rd level domain and FTP access to a LAMP server (in exchange for displaying an ad banner), but that's a different thing.

I am not sure what you mean by your question, could you clarify?

kernelsoe
Sounds like a blogger.com ...

Sorry for the question. I mean,

- the web has become easier to publish compare to past. (creating your own website) - in sheer number, the personal blogs of developers', programmers' blogs are greater and it is much easier to follow their RSS. - I really would love to read an Architect's personal blog or an local barista's personal one and could not find on the web? (do we lack a directory or rss?) - It's not seems to be likely that only tech-savvy people write blogs and other occupations don't. Other engineers or accountants may want to share their stories (right now mainly through short posts on twitter, fb ...) - I could easily follow my university's retired reactor, professors and read their posts on facebook. But there are full of distractions (never-ending feeds of dopamine slot machines) and I mean why don't many people publish on the web? - I could easily browse my fav programmers' website and read, take note in peace without distractions and follow their RSS. But it's a lot harder to find an architect's weblog (there are but fewer than programming blogs).

TomMarius
Yes, it's very much like blogger.com, but older.

What we have on 'our loca internet' is a few community hubs, one of them is a general one for all kinds of freelancers where they can put a link to their blog, and also the blog platforms have a general listing of blogs separated into categories that you can explore. I don't know of any such community hubs on the English speaking internet.

kernelsoe
Love to hear that your local community has a place to explore other than mainstream social networks.

"I don't know of any such community hubs on the English speaking internet." - Is that what reddit or discord has aimed to become?

I'd also love to hear this kind of community hubs websites from others.

dogma1138
I have a feeling that your stats and experience is heavily affected by selection bias.
kernelsoe
Yes, you could safely ignore the stats, but it's the reality that facebook is extremely (I mean too much) popular in my country and that slot machine is packed with endless dopamine.
rurban
They either meet in person or are writing books instead.

And they don't know how to blog, and they have no idea that this would be free.

kernelsoe
You are right. reading a precious book from them is an great exp.

Although writing a book vs posting a tweet has enormous differential, I think writing a blog post or an essay has somewhat between and constantly update-able.

As for me, writing an essay to share what I experience this month is a lot of work.

May be it's the same for others in general?

unearth3d
Depends how much people like to (or need to) reach out. I don't think it's mainly technical. I started late in my profession (land planning / ecology) while most started during uni so grew up with their network so they don't need to develop one - that's part of what I think is going on.

Also I don't see many traditional professionals as wanting to reach out and I find it enjoyable, and remunerative.

I have a wordpress blog (found via bt w3 site) and two twitters so not too walled that helps me reach out and be more findable. Self-hosting would take me too long to read up on as seem to be many options but I suspect most are unfit.

kernelsoe
"Also I don't see many traditional professionals as wanting to reach out" I agree.

If a young professional or a young kid read your blog on "Land planning/ Ecology" and inspire them to pursue career, it'd be great.

And that's what I'd like to mean, writing personal or technical blogs by all professionals to discuss, receive feedback.

slightwinder
Normal people don't care about walled gardes. They use facebook, instagram, youtube and discord to share their content. Writing blogs is mostly old-school for the strange dudes or those with real content.
kgraves
This.

Now in this day and age nobody wants to pay for reading an unknown blog on Medium (unless it’s a very niche tech community)

They just go to Twitter instead.

sciencewolf
I would imagine most people you know would have a difficult time running a website, even on Wordpress or something remotely technical. I used to work at a large website builder (think Wix, Squarespace, etc.) and it was shocking how many people hired out the drag-and-drop functionality for their sites!
cyberdrunk
> Why are there fewer non-tech personal blogs? (athletes', architects')

Tech is unique in a couple of ways:

1. It's a very young industry, so there are no set ways to do many things yet, which invites people to experiment and then write about it.

2. Unlike many other industries, in tech you can experiment using just your at-home equipment.

3. Older industries arguably expect their practitioners to be more mature, so you're less likely to see a structural engineer writing about his weird ideas on how to build support beams... Whereas in tech if you blog, even if it's BS, it is still welcomed.

4. There's plenty of money in tech and the blog can help you get to the highest paying roles. (whereas in for example architecture it's much more about just seniority and years on the job).

kernelsoe
I agree that tech has projects and ideas you could do yourself @home.

Now my question is ... why local structural engineers or other professionals rarely write a blog or an essay sharing their knowledge and experience or just normal expressive posts like you would see on mainstream social media?

cyberdrunk
I don't think there's that much innovation in those fields (esp. on individual contributor level), so there's considerably less to write about. The old professions are standardized to a large degree and they're unlike tech where new approaches to literally everything are invented (or, should I say, unleashed upon the world) regularly.