The content will be discovered just fine. It'll get embedded in the LLMs on the next round of training. Won't be attributed to your blog of course, but an approximation to the information will still get out there.
I've been indexing blogs and while I can't definitively say they are back, there are a lot of active bloggers. More than that, there are a lot of people wanting to have blogs to read since everything else has gone to shit.
I would love something that is close to phpBB but slightly more modern. Like, phpBB but with federation support and a clean API would be great. But most modern forum-like software is Reddit clones.
Two years ago I started a niche blog and tech site focused on hardware and software guides for Linux creatives. Even set up a forum because I was fed up with digging through scattered mailing lists and Discord servers for information. I like to think it has helped some people and it gives me a chance to practice writing human-readable documentation.
I want to start one myself. More of a public journal, but all the same. I keep having fits and starts and things distract me from the habit. That, and I'm never satisfied with my implementation in the end and I always want to try new or different things.
I started mine a couple of weeks back and I was surprised how useful it was to write down your process, as each post gives you a clear goal and helps you consolidate whatever you are working on.
Every blog is a niche blog because blogging is a niche. It never was and never will be mainstream. Social media began as an attempt to make the spirit of blogging a low lift for the noobs.
Today, you’re talking to an audience that is online, willing to venture outside social media, and opting to actively read content rather than passively listen or watch. That’s far from everyone and that’s okay.
I’ve maintained my own domain since 2010 and know plenty of others that still do as well
My page is one of my favorite places on the internet cause it’s in my opinion the original purpose of the internet which is to share your personal research and places to document and share personal ideas with infinite distribution.
If you’re looking to put one up, try https://bearblog.dev (no connection, just appreciate Herman’s work).
It’s got just the features you need, is built by a solo dev, and it’s got a very fair split between free and paid features. I used it to put up my personal site and have been very happy with the experience.
Are personal blogs back? My personal blog ten years ago (even twenty years ago) received a lot of direct traffic on all sorts of things from the primary search engines and so on. Nowadays, the only search engine that delivers any traffic to my site is Kagi! Looking back, I haven't changed my style of writing very much, so I suspect the reality is that I've just fallen behind in a comparative sense. There are much better things nowadays to access.
It's probably similar to the street-side musician. In old times, he may have been the only musician around you might hear. Nowadays, he's got to compete with a perfect recording of Hotel California by the Eagles.
The Gemini protocol, which has been posted here recently, is pretty good for reading personal and niche blogs. Yes, yes, I know you don't need Gemini for this, it is entirely possible from a technical perspective to host a minimalist personal blog over HTTP. But a great thing about Gemini is that there really isn't that much else on there, so the signal to noise ratio is higher. I check gemini://warmedal.se/~antenna/ pretty regularly and find some interesting posts there.
I don't know about being back, but it certainly isn't dead. A few years back, I used to get at least 10k readers a day. That number went down to less than 100 a day at it's lowest, I was writing 10 entries a year at most. Last year, I wrote just 4.
One thing I failed to notice was that RSS was still active. So this year, I started consistently contributing, over 150 so far, and I see RSS picking up right where it left off [0]. A lot of my blog post suck, but I write them as an observation and my current understanding of a subject. Readers have agency to skip what they don't like and only read what they like.
The article goes back and forth between bloggers who "are doing well" (ie: making money) and efforts that are non-commercial. It comes across as asking humanity to put more effort into writing and publishing in a non-profitable space while the blogging incentives are profit. I still think the unexplored space for blogging (and the LLM-proof space) is _private_ blogging--for friends and family. But maybe Facebook killed that space off, who knows.
My main advice for engineers is to write a blog. It isn't for anyone else it is to organize your thoughts. But should be presented in a way others can learn from.
For a year I published every Tuesday morning, and that schedule made me learn so much so fast.
108 comments
[ 55.6 ms ] story [ 1581 ms ] threadIs it? I haven't seen anyone in my circle return to blogging, nor kids of this generation.
Discoverability is going to be a massive problem, since search engines are dead. Maybe word-of-mouth through social media is enough?
(I fear) the blog of this generation's kids is called TikTok or whatever and the form is video instead of text.
My hunger-self does feel so memories are as lucid made with others in hope
"
...say, "People making a name of 'themselfes' for profit (boinboing IIRC), cos it has to be a (1994) profit ?
And to say something, that: it is only "the complexity of big-tech-companys", in terms of content" ?
Asking, cos i tryed...
I do it for um... "politikum" (if that is the correct term) maybe while keeping to give someone an excuse to laugh about...
...try, but remember mostly after a day or two, maybe one week... often before i lost a (often needed) password or email-adress, i delete it.
Did it for fun, get lost...than => doing something other...
> //deviantart.com/journalseducatethink/gallery
regards, ...
PS: rewritten while listening to: > //youtu.be/dzw7u9KOOBM?t=66
I don't think personal blogs are back.
https://neat.joeldare.com
Today, you’re talking to an audience that is online, willing to venture outside social media, and opting to actively read content rather than passively listen or watch. That’s far from everyone and that’s okay.
I’ve maintained my own domain since 2010 and know plenty of others that still do as well
My page is one of my favorite places on the internet cause it’s in my opinion the original purpose of the internet which is to share your personal research and places to document and share personal ideas with infinite distribution.
It’s got just the features you need, is built by a solo dev, and it’s got a very fair split between free and paid features. I used it to put up my personal site and have been very happy with the experience.
It's probably similar to the street-side musician. In old times, he may have been the only musician around you might hear. Nowadays, he's got to compete with a perfect recording of Hotel California by the Eagles.
Blogging kind of was better in the past.
I also remember geocities. It was kind of cool.
Neocities unfortunately does not really capture that old spirit. It's just ... different.
It seems like you'd get traffic from search engines a few years back, but now the only traffic I've had is from a HN post.
Everything points to optimizing for "AEO" for LLMs now
One thing I failed to notice was that RSS was still active. So this year, I started consistently contributing, over 150 so far, and I see RSS picking up right where it left off [0]. A lot of my blog post suck, but I write them as an observation and my current understanding of a subject. Readers have agency to skip what they don't like and only read what they like.
[0]: https://imgur.com/a/RSVtD1W
nekoweb is another one: https://nekoweb.org/explore?page=1&sort=lastupd&by=tag&q=