How Jason Kottke is thinking about kottke.org at 20 | Hacker News Reader

How Jason Kottke is thinking about kottke.org at 20

niemanlab.org

47 pointsprostoalex12 comments

Kottke makes the important point that the demise of GoogleReader and decline of RSS was really the turning point in the popularity of blogs. I often wonder how things might have been (better?), if there had been a more accessible independent group of writers over the last 5 years.

I feel like Twitter, Facebook, and to a lesser extent Instagram etc would have been forced to be better by some competition as well. OTOH I have saved months of my life not reading them...

Feedly is an excellent service (with great web and mobile apps) for those looking for a feedreader that is actively supported.

The un-cluttered URL is: http://www.niemanlab.org/2018/02/last-blog-standing-last-guy... without all that tracking junk on it.

Thanks. Unfortunately all queries to niemanlab.org are not returning any results i.e. the site is overloaded.

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:eTUqZX...

Which is ironic, for a blog named 'Last blog standing'.

No, "Last blog standing" is part of the article title. Said blog is kottke.org (which is up), not niemanlab.org (which is down).

It's someone else's tracking junk which is actually fun because it ends up suggesting those privacy-invaders that lots of people came from "Benedict's Newsletter".

It's an interesting point that he thinks the site would not take off if he launched it today, compared to when it started in 1998.

Similar to the early adopters of Instagram who built huge followings simply because they were there first. Anyone starting today has to face a huge headwind: the content algorithms.

Are there other examples of vestigial platforms that are leftover successes from before?

Email newsletters are the last outpost of unfiltered connection - I shudder to think of what happens when personal email dips below 100% organic reach.

It seems analogous to a forest canopy...initially the soil is rich and opportunity seems boundless. But over time old-growth trees grow and spread until they absorb most of the available sunlight, making it difficult or impossible for saplings to get started below.

I actually read Seth Godin's blog: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2018/01/an-open-note...

Where he basically says that Gmail's promotions folder acts essentially as a filter. I wonder if others have any relevant experience to share on the matter.

this post makes me nostalgi-sad

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