The article describes the author's walk through various companies (Sun, Joyent, Oxide) and how his blogging evolved with (and thanks to!) them. Not quite what I expected, particularly the points about how Sun truly encouraged blogging, so it was interesting in that regard. The many links to older articles help paint a good picture of this story.
As for "conclusions"... I also hit the 2-decade mark earlier this year (https://blogsystem5.substack.com/p/20-years-of-blogging) and I can spot similar thoughts to mine: blogging has evolved from short/informal posts to longer-form more structured pieces, and the smaller "throw-away" articles that one would write in the past now happen in other platforms like Twitter or Reddit. Which matches... the trend for everyone else too?
I believe for someone who wants to dive into blogging, start with "throw-away" articles otherwise giving pristine structure and stack will lead to analysis paralysis. Slowly and steadily hone your skills - writing and devops side of hosting your site.
If you blog, do you go back and look at old pieces?
I do that occasionally, mostly to reshare on social media or here. Gotta chase those karma points.
But sometimes someone will ask a question in slack or via email that reminds me "I wrote something about that once!" and I'll dig up a piece to share.
As a gift for a family member who had a non-technical blog, I once gathered posts together, edited them, and turned them into a book. That was a ton of fun.
I'm doing that a lot at work actually because I have blogged extensively about Bazel before (and other related build topics) and many of those posts are coming handy to answer questions that people have at this "new" place. It has kinda become a meme. "Ah yeah, there is a post for that!"
Yes. I also have a "random blog post" button which I like to hit from time to time. It's nice to see where I was years ago and what was going on in my life back then. (my blog spans more than 20 years by now)
With search engines polluted with SEO spam and AI vacuuming up content to ultimately sell it on, I lost the motivation to write publicly. I no longer feel I'm directly in touch with and helping the average Joe. Does anyone else feel like this? I can't I'm comfortable with my decision but nothing in the last year has made me reassess it.
If anything, all the spam and lack of real discussion that shows up on my daily feeds has encouraged me to search for smaller authors and bloggers, who I find are more insightful anyways. Not all hope is lost!
I have found no good way to smaller authors. I've seen a few web rings that give me cool but completely random websites. HN is the best I've got so far.
A curated and subscribable list of smaller authors categorised by area, where the sites aren't wall-gardened and laiden with trackers, would seem to fit the bill.
I’ve found a lot of new authors via Substack, which is interesting in the context of blogs, as newsletters largely predate blogs, but never caught on for most people in the way that blogs did, but now with apps, push notifications, and social networking components and recommendation algorithms, newsletters are making a big comeback.
Also, newsletters and blogs are not so different in the end, as prior newsletter editions are easily available on modern platforms like Substack and others, while also allowing for easy monetization of any or all posts, a feature popularized by Patreon that has percolated through the industry.
You might also look into so-called starter packs, a new-ish feature of Bluesky, which, along with Mastodon, has been another new source of authors for me lately.
I mostly blog for myself. It helps me clarify my thoughts and really understand what I'm writing about. It also helps me remember myself as I was 5 or 10 years ago.
If it weren't public, I don't think I'd do it. I've rarely kept a journal or diary.
I hear you about AI, though. Aren't there headers you can add to dissuade those crawlers?
> AI vacuuming up content to ultimately sell it on
To me that's this. I never cared for analytics and knowing how many people read what I write. But it appears I care about AI benefiting from it. There is no way to prevent them from stealing my content, so I may as well not publish it at all.
I'm with you there. Before Stack Overflow, I credit most of my learning to what I picked up from blogs. Even after SO, blogs remained valuable because there were tutorials and code examples for things that would have been rejected as duplicates or whatever at SO. YouTube is similar, although I prefer written articles.
Now? Forget about it. As far as I'm concerned, my notes and learning experiments are private. I didn't create that world, valley techbros did. I'm not big enough for OAI to sign a licensing deal with me, but apparently I'm powerless enough that they can scrape my blog posts and Github packages and credit my work as their own.
If I share my learnings in the future, it will be for a free class or webinar, for an audience of real people. Y'know, the way the internet used to be.
You don't have to absolutely write for the public. Maybe some articles here and there but consider blogging as a documentation of some sort or "dear diary" but digital, running on the greatest and best tech stack.
Nice article! I am about to reach the five-year mark of blogging (https://pncnmnp.github.io/blog.html) - I started during my second year as an undergraduate. Over the years, I've seen that:
* Keeping the blogging stack minimal helps. Using simple tools has helped me focus entirely on the content. For instance, I write everything in Google Docs and then manually convert it to HTML.
* It is beyond okay to feel stuck, especially with technical content. I often have several partially written drafts sitting around. Revisiting these drafts periodically helps me see them with fresh perspectives. Eventually, inspiration strikes, and I end up finishing those half-baked drafts.
* It helps to avoid obsessing over analytics. I have intentionally avoided analytics, and it has kinda allowed me to focus on topics that genuinely interest me, rather than writing solely to please some imaginary audience. It kind of gives me the freedom to explore obscure subjects, even if they appeal to only a small number of my readers.
The article describes the author's walk through various companies (Sun, Joyent, Oxide) and how his blogging evolved with (and thanks to!) them. Not quite what I expected, particularly the points about how Sun truly encouraged blogging, so it was interesting in that regard. The many links to older articles help paint a good picture of this story.
As for "conclusions"... I also hit the 2-decade mark earlier this year (https://blogsystem5.substack.com/p/20-years-of-blogging) and I can spot similar thoughts to mine: blogging has evolved from short/informal posts to longer-form more structured pieces, and the smaller "throw-away" articles that one would write in the past now happen in other platforms like Twitter or Reddit. Which matches... the trend for everyone else too?
I believe for someone who wants to dive into blogging, start with "throw-away" articles otherwise giving pristine structure and stack will lead to analysis paralysis. Slowly and steadily hone your skills - writing and devops side of hosting your site.
If you blog, do you go back and look at old pieces?
I do that occasionally, mostly to reshare on social media or here. Gotta chase those karma points.
But sometimes someone will ask a question in slack or via email that reminds me "I wrote something about that once!" and I'll dig up a piece to share.
As a gift for a family member who had a non-technical blog, I once gathered posts together, edited them, and turned them into a book. That was a ton of fun.
I'm doing that a lot at work actually because I have blogged extensively about Bazel before (and other related build topics) and many of those posts are coming handy to answer questions that people have at this "new" place. It has kinda become a meme. "Ah yeah, there is a post for that!"
Yes. I also have a "random blog post" button which I like to hit from time to time. It's nice to see where I was years ago and what was going on in my life back then. (my blog spans more than 20 years by now)
I mostly do that when I am taking about something Il that I wrote about and want to share it.
With search engines polluted with SEO spam and AI vacuuming up content to ultimately sell it on, I lost the motivation to write publicly. I no longer feel I'm directly in touch with and helping the average Joe. Does anyone else feel like this? I can't I'm comfortable with my decision but nothing in the last year has made me reassess it.
If anything, all the spam and lack of real discussion that shows up on my daily feeds has encouraged me to search for smaller authors and bloggers, who I find are more insightful anyways. Not all hope is lost!
I have found no good way to smaller authors. I've seen a few web rings that give me cool but completely random websites. HN is the best I've got so far.
A curated and subscribable list of smaller authors categorised by area, where the sites aren't wall-gardened and laiden with trackers, would seem to fit the bill.
I’ve found a lot of new authors via Substack, which is interesting in the context of blogs, as newsletters largely predate blogs, but never caught on for most people in the way that blogs did, but now with apps, push notifications, and social networking components and recommendation algorithms, newsletters are making a big comeback.
Also, newsletters and blogs are not so different in the end, as prior newsletter editions are easily available on modern platforms like Substack and others, while also allowing for easy monetization of any or all posts, a feature popularized by Patreon that has percolated through the industry.
You might also look into so-called starter packs, a new-ish feature of Bluesky, which, along with Mastodon, has been another new source of authors for me lately.
I mostly blog for myself. It helps me clarify my thoughts and really understand what I'm writing about. It also helps me remember myself as I was 5 or 10 years ago.
If it weren't public, I don't think I'd do it. I've rarely kept a journal or diary.
I hear you about AI, though. Aren't there headers you can add to dissuade those crawlers?
> AI vacuuming up content to ultimately sell it on
To me that's this. I never cared for analytics and knowing how many people read what I write. But it appears I care about AI benefiting from it. There is no way to prevent them from stealing my content, so I may as well not publish it at all.
I'm with you there. Before Stack Overflow, I credit most of my learning to what I picked up from blogs. Even after SO, blogs remained valuable because there were tutorials and code examples for things that would have been rejected as duplicates or whatever at SO. YouTube is similar, although I prefer written articles.
Now? Forget about it. As far as I'm concerned, my notes and learning experiments are private. I didn't create that world, valley techbros did. I'm not big enough for OAI to sign a licensing deal with me, but apparently I'm powerless enough that they can scrape my blog posts and Github packages and credit my work as their own.
If I share my learnings in the future, it will be for a free class or webinar, for an audience of real people. Y'know, the way the internet used to be.
You don't have to absolutely write for the public. Maybe some articles here and there but consider blogging as a documentation of some sort or "dear diary" but digital, running on the greatest and best tech stack.
Nice article! I am about to reach the five-year mark of blogging (https://pncnmnp.github.io/blog.html) - I started during my second year as an undergraduate. Over the years, I've seen that:
* Keeping the blogging stack minimal helps. Using simple tools has helped me focus entirely on the content. For instance, I write everything in Google Docs and then manually convert it to HTML.
* It is beyond okay to feel stuck, especially with technical content. I often have several partially written drafts sitting around. Revisiting these drafts periodically helps me see them with fresh perspectives. Eventually, inspiration strikes, and I end up finishing those half-baked drafts.
* It helps to avoid obsessing over analytics. I have intentionally avoided analytics, and it has kinda allowed me to focus on topics that genuinely interest me, rather than writing solely to please some imaginary audience. It kind of gives me the freedom to explore obscure subjects, even if they appeal to only a small number of my readers.
Does anyone remember blogs being called E/N sites at first? Everything/Nothing sites?
Maybe it was only in the group of sites I followed, but I think that name was pretty common.
Lived through that period and never heard of it.
SA has a reference from 2000 that suggests it's a little bit different than a blog.
https://www.somethingawful.com/news/en-spotlight/
Thanks, yeah I guess it wasn't as popular as I thought. Thanks for finding that link