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by arjie 284 days ago

The problem for people who preferred the text-based approach is that previously they were over-represented and found things they liked everywhere. Like you say, the vast majority of people prefer image reels, short-form video, microblogs like Twitter, or comments on aggregators like Reddit or HN. That's the truth, but that original cohort of people lost their place and there's no obvious substitute.

I think that's primarily because there's no Schelling point for this. There's no single place where everyone who preferred the other form would go to. Perhaps there are webrings out there and stuff like that, but I haven't seen anything.

I've submitted my friends' blogs to the Kagi Small Web (and I'm in there as well) and almost everything there has a human feel to it, but it does not have cluster-navigation.

3 comments

SilverElfin 284 days ago

That better product but with a smaller audience similar to the earlier days would feel very different in practice. It’s sad that the original cohort got overrun and lost their place, and have nowhere to go. Maybe HN is one such place. I think something similar is felt by the original cohorts of people when cities and neighborhoods and ways of life change.

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AnthonyMouse 284 days ago

> I think that's primarily because there's no Schelling point for this. There's no single place where everyone who preferred the other form would go to.

It seems like what this needs is a search engine that actually surfaces that sort of thing, because that's not a chicken and egg problem. It can open on day one by indexing the existing non-commercial blogs and free-to-read substacks etc., which makes it immediately useful for people who are looking for that.

And then as more people use the search engine, people are more encouraged to create that kind of site because the people looking for it now have a way of actually finding it.

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arjie 284 days ago

One theory I had was that blogrolls were common previously and allowed for cluster navigation. My friends and I certainly had these pointing to each other because why wouldn't you? The big bloggers on HN I see are tptacek, rachelbythebay, and simonwillison and none of them have a blogroll. General wisdom in website SEO etc. is to keep the user on your page and not send them elsewhere and I thought that perhaps many people were adhering to that. However, I think blogrolls were just not common ever and I was in a bubble that had them and so thought they were.

Here's what I did to find out. I first used an RSS aggregate feed that I recall: Planet Debian. I then picked out a ten year old archive of that feed but not on September 11 itself (well because you know). And the data says that blogrolls were always rare! So it's not that.