Kill your blog

http://www.wired.com/entertainment/theweb/magazine/16-11/st_essay

by narendra • 18 years ago

36 54 18 years ago

henning• 18 years ago

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• 18 years ago

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

One word: SUBMARINE.

IsaacSchlueter2• 18 years ago

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• 18 years ago

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

IsaacSchlueter2• 18 years ago

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.

fallentimes4• 18 years ago

Is that the old guy who wears sunglasses at night or?

randrews2• 18 years ago

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• 18 years ago

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.

randrews2• 18 years ago

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 )

DanielBMarkham4• 18 years ago

You can also write in your blog for your great-great-great-grandkids -- family that hasn't been born yet. Or you can write as a way of organizing book material. Or you can write as a way to keep and share memories with just a few people.

Blogging is an internal thing first, external second.

davidw• 18 years ago

> write in your blog for your great-great-great-grandkids

You think stuff we are producing these days will last? I'm dubious. Paper lasts a decent amount of time, but digital media?

unalone8• 18 years ago

That's what I thought originally. Now I use Indexhibit to manage my site and when I've got a good idea, I write it as an essay, publish it when it's revised. I also give a link to my HN threads page, since I'd think that most of my talking about intellectual matters happens here, and since here you can follow the discussions I'm in and really get some good debates.

I think that the idea of a personal "blog" is dead. Other mediums have really taken precedence. Very few blogs really stand out to me, nowadays; my favorite ones tend to be more unique implementations, such as BigContrarian and Kottke. Wordpress blogs look old and dated in a lot of ways: they try too much to bridge the gap between the formal and the personal, and I think they lose out because of it.

kalid• 18 years ago

Completely agree. My writing and thought process has improved a ton since I've been blogging. Even better, you get a chance to interact with people and discuss a deep thought more than a twitter message.

brlewis• 18 years ago

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.

senihele• 18 years ago

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.

raganwald• 18 years ago

Kill your blog? Say it aint so!

http://weblog.raganwald.com/2008/07/brief-history-of-dangero...

MikeCapone• 18 years ago

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• 18 years ago

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?

cstejerean• 18 years ago

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.

unalone8• 18 years ago

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.

jamesbritt2• 18 years ago

" 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.

markessien2• 18 years ago

Are you somehow saying that a band is in some way equivalent to a book? Songs are just emotional, they don't transfer any information. I don't even know how you can make the statement you made - a book can convey so many thoughts because it's slow and complex. You can absorb ideas by reading that you cannot by watching movies. Movies run at their own pace, books run at your pace.

It's NOT easier to make a movie. A movie is a masive logistical effort. Forming bands is just a trendy thing, but most bands I know produce silly music. They say banal things.

Writing is still the backbone of human thought. In whatever form it comes - the well thought out written word will always accompany human civilisation.

ivankirigin• 18 years ago

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.

unalone8• 18 years ago

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.

fallentimes4• 18 years ago

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.

lemonysnicket• 18 years ago

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• 18 years ago

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

awt• 18 years ago

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.

MicahWedemeyer• 18 years ago

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.

marketer• 18 years ago

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.

fallentimes4• 18 years ago

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.

fallentimes4• 18 years ago

"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.

markessien2• 18 years ago

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

tlrobinson• 18 years ago

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>

mattmaroon• 18 years ago

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.

rockstar9• 18 years ago

clearly a flamebait ...

nir• 18 years ago

Shiny object!!!

dimitar• 18 years ago

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.

nocivus• 18 years ago

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...

dmoney• 18 years ago

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.

Kill your blog

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