Group blogs as social network alternatives? A thought experiment

Showing all posts tagged: blogs

Group blogs as social network alternatives? A thought experiment

22 January 2025

The Verge recently published a list of social network alternatives for people disillusioned with the likes of X, Facebook, Threads, and Instagram, to consider moving to. Having built-up a network of acquaintances and followers on these channels though, I’m not sure how many people would really consider migrating. Starting over, persuading contacts to relocate, might be a step too far for some. Still, there’ll be people determined to leave certain social network platforms.

But where will they go?

The Verge list includes many of the usual suspects. Bluesky, Mastodon, Snapchat, and Discord. There’s also a few that are new to me: Spill, Trust Cafe, Spoutible, and CounterSocial. Tumblr is also suggested, and might be one of the easier-to-adopt options, as the experience is somewhat similar to that of a micro-blogging platform. But you’d still have your work cut out getting your followers to join you there. Reddit is also listed, but be aware, your content might be used to train AI bots.

Conspicuous through absence from the list though are blogs. But aren’t blogs only for one person, I hear you asking. What use then are blogs as an alternative sort of social network? While it’s true many blogs are maintained by one person, some blogging platforms, including WordPress (WP), allow individual blogs to have multiple users. These are group blogs. Someone sets themselves up as an administrator, and then invites acquaintances to join. Blog-based social networks would be similar.

Here, a member’s user page would serve as their profile page, where biographical information can be added. From there someone would be able to post content — blog posts — as if they were doing so on Facebook or Instagram. As far as I know, there’s no limit to how many users (being admins, editors, authors, or contributors) a WP blog can have. This WP Website Tools post suggests millions. I’m not sure a blog-based social network would have millions of users, but it could have a lot.

Such a setup would need to be hosted on a robust web server, capable of handling what might be heavy user traffic. This would entail cost, but if this were shared among members, it may not be onerous. It might be a small price to pay. Members of a blog-based (private) social network would no longer need to concern themselves with the whims, and rules and regulations, of a billionaire tech-bro. Nor would algorithms be a problem. Sure, it would be different. But it would be independent.

To be clear, this sort of idea is not going to be for everyone, in fact it’s not going to be for most people. Certainly not influencers (but you never know). And probably not anyone not comfortable with setting up a self-hosted blogging application (such as WP), on a web server. But on the plus side, members would be part of a social network they controlled under their own terms. These networks might need “community” guidelines of some sort, but I doubt these would need to be expansive.

Of course, anyone hoping to escape from the mainstream social networks, to a blog-based social network, would still have to convince their acquaintances to follow them over. There’s probably more questions than answers. There would be a learning curve for some people. So maybe we’re back to square one. And yes, this thought experiment of mine is WordPress-centric (since I use WP), but no doubt there are other blogging platforms with similar functionality. Still, this might be an option.

My blog is powered by my obsessions

18 January 2025

What makes for a good blog? Merlin Mann, writing in 2008, the golden age of blogging if ever there was one, has a few answers to the question:

Good blogs reflect focused obsessions. People start real blogs because they think about something a lot. Maybe even five things. But, their brain so overflows with curiosity about a family of topics that they can’t stop reading and writing about it. They make and consume smart forebrain porn. So: where do this person’s obsessions take them?

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blogs, IndieWeb

Indie Web makes all of us property owners online

6 January 2025

American engineer and product manager Den Delimarsky offers another way of looking at the core Indie Web tenets of owning your own website domain, and owning your own content. See yourself as a property owner, rather than a renter.

If any of your online presence is on social media channels, you’re leasing the space, you don’t own it. The property owner could give you your marching orders at any time.

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blogs, IndieWeb, trends

Substack, no alternative to independent websites and blogs

25 November 2024

Online publishing platform Substack, founded in 2017, was all anyone could talk about by 2022. Writers were scrambling to jump on the bandwagon, having heard tales of six-figure revenues being earned by some publishers. Even though we’ve heard those sorts of stories before. I even joined up myself, to see what the fuss was about.

But as someone who’s had their own web presence for decades, I couldn’t see the appeal of incorporating my brand into someone else’s. I think I only ever published one short article there.

But I’d already been hearing Substack appeared to permit the proliferation of misinformation, conspiracy theorists, and far-right ideologies, and was taking no action against the publishers of such content. I have no interest whatsoever in reading that sort of material, but it makes me wonder. Should content some people find objectionable actually be deleted by the administrators of a publishing platform like Substack? And then: how do we define what is acceptable, and what’s not?

For me, hate-speech and anything inciting violence or lawlessness, is unacceptable. Other topics, such as misinformation, and conspiracy theories, may be a little harder to quantify. During the COVID-19 lockdowns, almost everyone I knew complied with stay-at-home orders, and vaccine mandates. However there were some, neighbours, and others I’d see regularly, who hitherto seemed to be no different than me, convinced COVID-19 was a hoax, and the vaccines posed a serious threat.

I’d tell these people I disagreed with what they thought, but their resolve was unstinting. They believed absolutely in what they thought. They were wrong in my eyes, their views plain dangerous to say the least, but this is a democracy, and, like it or lump it, we’re all entitled to our opinion. No doubt, some of these people, would, if they read my blog, object to some of the content I publish here. But does that, of itself, constitute grounds for having it (somehow) forcibly removed?

But back to Substack. American blogger and entrepreneur Anil Dash, for one, believes the platform was created to give voice to extremists:

Substack is, just as a reminder, a political project made by extremists with a goal of normalizing a radical, hateful agenda by co-opting well-intentioned creators’ work in service of cross-promoting attacks on the vulnerable. You don’t have to take my word for it; Substack’s CEO explicitly said they won’t ban someone who is explicitly spouting hate, and when confronted with the rampant white supremacist propaganda that they are profiting from on their site, they took down… four of the Nazis. Four.

John Gruber, writing at Daring Fireball, however counters with the idea that Substack is simply an open-for-all publishing platform:

I know quite a few people whose opinions I admire who feel the same way as Dash here. I’ll disagree. I think Substack sees itself as a publishing tool and platform. They’re not here to promote any particular side. It makes no more sense for them to refuse to publish someone for being too right-wing than it would for WordPress or Medium or, say, GitHub or YouTube. Substack, I think, sees itself like that.

Despite my indifference to Substack, this is largely how I see things as well. I’ve read numerous articles published on Substack, which are just always useful and informative. I’ve never encountered anything hateful, deliberately misleading, or conspiratorial, though obviously such content exists. As it would on self-hosted websites/blogs that are not part of any publishing platform.

Calls to have such content removed seem pointless, unless laws, defamation for instance, are contravened. Fighting fire with fire may be the only option. Writing in response, and criticising material that is hateful or misleading. Do so from your own, self-hosted, independent, website though. Do not allow any publishing platform to assimilate your brand, or your content.

Katie Cunningham: write badly to write well

20 November 2024

Australian author and journalist Katie Cunningham:

My high school English teacher told me that good writing is the tenth draft of bad writing.

I saw this in The Booklist, a weekly newsletter by the Sydney Morning Herald, the other day. Sometimes I feel as if I rewrite everything I post here ten times before publishing it.

People also need a motive to start a personal website

15 November 2024

Garrett writing on his Mastodon page:

How do we make it easier for “everyone else,” the “normies,” all those “regular” folk who just want to get online, how do we reduce the friction required to get them to make their own little corners of the web? How do we make the #IndieWeb easier? How do we make the #WebRevival more convenient?

It’s the question of the times, and one I think about. Thing is, almost “everyone else” is comfortable with the ease of using a social media platform to get online. Set up an account. Find friends and follow them. Ask them to do the same. Start posting stuff. Sit back and enjoy the discussion that might accompany a post. No special knowledge required. Nothing else to worry about.

It’s just too easy. But the personal website space really seems reserved for people with a keen interest in creating their own presence online, because there are a few hurdles to entry. I could say — with my relatively low-tech website setup — “well, look at me. I don’t have that much technical knowledge, but see: I have a website, therefore so can you.” But that’s not really much help.

I wanted to have a personal website, and was motivated enough to figure what I needed to do, to make that happen. The problem is, I just don’t think there’s too many regular people, who are the same. Even if there are free-to-sign-up options, such as WordPress.com, or Neocities, open to them.

So, it’s not just ease of setup. Some sort of motive is needed. And motives have come along before. Fifteen to twenty years ago people left, right, and centre, were setting up blogs, motivated by the prospect of making money from them. Some bloggers boasted of “six-figure incomes.” It was enough to see complete novices figuring out content management systems, hosting, content production, and how to build an audience, all in the name of bringing in a dollar or million.

I don’t know what the prospects are like for website monetisation today. Sure, there’s people making some money from their blogs, but like fifteen-plus years ago, only a handful are earning enough to make a difference. Making money from a website may not then be the enticement we’re looking for.

If we are to lure more people away from social media, and encourage them to launch personal websites, presenting them with a motive is something that also needs to be considered.

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blogs, IndieWeb, technology, trends

Things Magazine latest list of links to things

14 November 2024

Things Magazine has been publishing lists of links for over fourteen years, and here’s the latest batch. I don’t exactly know where they source all their links from, which are all top quality, but it’s a process that must take a certain time. Next time someone tries to tell you publishing a link-blog is easier than a long-form writing blog, see if they can do better than Things.

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blogs, history, publishing, trends

NaNoWriMo, NaBloPoMo, and WeblogPoMo AMA, November hots up

4 November 2024

National Novel Writing Month AKA NaNoWriMo, is on this month, for better or worse.

But if you’re a writer seeking distractions from various November happenings — I’m referring more to northern hemisphere inhabitants facing the onset of winter — and don’t want to write a novel, there are other options.

National Blog Posting Month AKA NaBloPoMo, is a write-a-blog-post-each-day challenge, similar to Weblog Posting Month AKA WeblogPoMo, which ran back in May. NaBloPoMo was established in 2006, and for reasons I cannot fathom, have only found out about it now. A list of this year’s NaBloPoMo participants can be seen here.

Back to WeblogPoMo. While not holding another blog-post-a-day challenge this month, something called WeblogPoMo AMA is on instead. Here’s how organiser Anne Sturdivant, sees it working:

For this challenge I want to foster writer interaction: write a blog post starting with a question — the AMA — and then answer the question yourself in the blog post. Others will likewise write AMA/question posts, but also answer the AMA/questions from other bloggers, linking to their initial post.

I write here most days, but don’t know if I could do so every last day of the month. I think NaBloPoMo and WeblogPoMo are cool with people missing a day here or there, but it’s still a pretty big ask. WeblogPoMo AMA, on the other hand, seems like the sort of thing you can jump in and out of, as and when you’re able to.

If you’re taking part in any of these events though, all the best.

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American bloggers, personal website publishers, may be among ‘enemies within’

1 November 2024

American newspapers The Los Angeles Times, and The Washington Post, have come under fire for declining to endorse US Presidential candidate Kamala Harris. Their refusal to endorse Harris does not, however, from stem from a desire to back Donald Trump. Rather, both publications had prepared endorsements for Harris, but were blocked from publishing them by their owners.

The suggestion is the proprietors of both outlets fear they may face retribution for endorsing Harris, should Trump be elected. For some time Trump has threatened reprisals against Americans he sees as being the “enemies from within”, should he assume the presidency. Those showing support for Harris — in what is an election in a democracy, no less — would appear to among these “enemies”.

But major news outlets are not the only publishers concerned by the prospect of a Trump presidency. Bloggers, and personal website publishers, are likewise worried that their writing may see them labelled as an enemy within. People, like you and me, who are exercising their right to the freedom of speech, the cornerstone of any democracy, are also fearful of the outcome of the election, as US blogger Tracey Durnell writes:

In the lead-up to the election, I’ve been thinking about this blog: how much it adds to my life to be able to write and think freely… but also, how a written record of my views could become a liability if Trump wins the election or commits insurrection 2.0. I chose years ago to blog under my real name — and my political views are pretty clear. To a Christian extremist, a vocal “porn-writing” leftist woman like me — a woman without children, no less — is “the enemy within.”

No one stopped writing diaries, they started publishing blogs instead

28 October 2024

Mali Waugh, writing for The Age:

I also think that keeping a written diary is not really done any more. I wonder whether part of this is that people are much more accepting of traditionally private things being put in the public domain. For the most part, this is a good thing but also sometimes disgusting, like when people share their nose job recovery pictures or their recipes for microwaved brie.

I kind of keep a dairy — but it’s more a listing of the day’s happenings — on some of my socials pages. In fact, my diary-style posts are just about the only content I publish on those pages.

But I doubt handwritten journaling has declined because people necessarily want to make details of their lives and thoughts more public. It’s simply because, no brainer, easier ways to keep a dairy have come along: the web, personal websites, blogs, social media, etc.

I couldn’t see myself starting a handwritten dairy at this point though. It would be more work. Another mouth that would to be fed content. It’d be too much like having a second website. Plus, paper diaries would be more stuff to haul around. It’s like I say: one personal website is enough.

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