| Well, ask if people are satisfied with their own blog CMS, and they'll probably say "no". I had to use something as obscure as Blogofile to satisfy my needs. ## Technically I think some competition for Jekyll is sorely missed, and no one who isn’t a nerd even knows about static blogging. Granted, it's also been a royal pain for me, when it comes to pushing automated tweets, whenever I update my blog, so there are a lot of problems to be solved. I still haven’t bothered to write something in Python that tweets based on my RSS activity. (ifttt hasn’t worked optimally for me.) Nevertheless, it’s liberating to be able to simply create a Markdown file and write a post like this: ---
title: Something Something Paul Graham
date: 2012/09/30 23:00:00
---
That Paul Graham might have a point.
Run Blogofile’s Amazon S3 uploader with one command, and boom, uploaded. As a bonus, I can back up my blog really easily using version/change control, since all files are static.There are a lot of steps here too complicated for the average user, but all it takes is a moderately simple Mac app, and most people are golden - especially now that everyone has Dropbox to store their files. It seems that there is a tendency for people who want to revolutionize blogging and social media to reinvent RSS. I doubt that’s the way forward. --- ## Socially If I were to suggest an idea for a Wordpress-like platform, it would be a reinvention of the blogroll. When people don’t have the reach to attract advertizers, they can instead link to other users on the same platform and vice versa for exposure. I would find a way to gauge the reach of blogs, and allow customers to find bloggers with similar reach to collaborate with for a mutually beneficial exposure that attracts traffic. I imagine a business model could be built on this alone, but it would probably be much easier, if people were on the same platform, say, Tumblr or Wordpress. Tumblr really revolutionized blogging by adding a community layer onto their platform to make it a social experience that married Wordpress blogging and Twitter. |