Showing all posts about blogs
The near demise, and comeback, of Medium, an online publishing platform
17 July 2025
Tony Stubblebine, CEO of online publishing platform Medium, writing at Medium:
I’m gonna write the wonky post of Medium’s turnaround. I’m not sure if a company is allowed to be this blunt about how bad things were. But it’s very much of the Medium ethos that if something interesting happened to you, then you should write it up and share it. So hopefully this will give some inside info about what happens to a startup in distress, and one way to approach a financial, brand, product, and community turnaround.
Like many online writers I signed up for Medium — which is similar to Substack — a couple of years after its 2012 founding. A few people I knew were publishing there, and I was curious to see what it was about. I’m yet to post anything though.
But Stubblebine’s account of Medium’s ups and downs is, at times, astonishing. Particularly the amounts of money, both as investments, and in debt, that are involved. Of course, there will be plenty of people who’ll call those sums a pittance, but speaking as a boot-strapping independent online publisher, they are incredible.
The lure of publishing your work on a platform such as Medium, lies in the opportunity to be paid for it. And no doubt, some writers posting on Medium do well.
For my part, the prospect of publishing there (or on similar platforms) is tempting, but doing so just isn’t in my DNA. I’ve never liked the idea of assimilating my brand into someone else’s, something I’ve said before. Anything you do on a third-party publishing platform is doable on your own website/blog, if you are prepared to persevere.
That’s not to say I wouldn’t ever post there, and for someone like me, a platform such as Medium might be comparable to a social media channel.
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blogs, publishing, self publishing, trends, writing
IndieWeb is Punk, you have the blog, now here is the t-shirt
25 June 2025
Jamie Thingelstad recently suggested IndieWeb is to the web of today, what punk rock was to music of the 1970’s. IndieWeb is Punk, he said.
In a comment on Thingelstad’s post, Robert Birming said the slogan would look good on a t-shirt.
Not long after, Jim Mitchell unveiled a line — one black, one white — of t-shirts emblazoned with the words IndieWeb is Punk, which are available for purchase.
Never mind the bollocks, here’s the bloggers…
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blogs, design, IndieWeb, SmallWeb
Indie Web, Small Web, and now Sovereign Web?
11 June 2025
Aevisia writing at the Sovereign Web:
The truth is, I’ve had some difficult experiences with parts of those communities. At times, I’ve felt excluded or harshly judged simply for choosing a different path or expressing my creativity in ways that some consider unconventional or even controversial.
I linked to Aevisia’s Small Web Movement project in March. If Indie Web and Small Web are spaces that belong to everyone, I don’t see how one person can tell another they’re not welcome. Someone told me a while back I wasn’t doing Indie Web right. In their opinion. I gave their email due consideration, then flicked it away.
But I’ve had comments like that all the way through the time I’ve had disassociated. I’ve not been doing something or other right, according to someone or other. But the answer there, I find, is to keep on doing what you’re doing.
Unless say plagiarism, something deeply inappropriate, or the illegal, is involved, no one can tell you, the creator, that you’re doing something wrong and don’t belong. All criticism of that nature means is someone doesn’t like what you do, not that it’s wrong.
No doubt I’ve been excluded in some corners too, but that’s the way things go. And no doubt I’ve excluded others in some fashion, at some time, but I’ve seldom been directly critical of what anyone has been doing.
If starting another movement, Sovereign Web, is the solution, then I don’t have a problem with that. But everyone’s paths, and their expressions of creativity, are different. I think the response is not to worry about the opinions of other people, and stay on your course.
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blogs, IndieWeb, self publishing, Small Web
Claude fails to explain the abrupt disappearance of their blog
10 June 2025
AI assistant Claude must have had one of the shortest blogging stints ever seen in the blogosphere. Just days after announcing Claude’s debut as a blogger — albeit with “human oversight” — Anthropic, Claude’s creator, almost immediately shuttered the publication. The URL for the blog presently redirects to Anthropic’s main website.
We can only speculate as to why the plug was pulled on the venture, but I was looking forward to reading some of Claude’s output. This preferably with a minimum of human oversight, as I was curious to see how well an AI assistant could write by themselves. Anthropic’s move could possibly be seen to suggest they weren’t too confident in Claude’s blogging abilities though.
It’s good news for human self-publishers: we live to blog for another day. Or two.
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artificial intelligence, blogs, self publishing, technology
Happy twentieth birthday to swissmiss, the blog of Tina Roth Eisenberg
29 May 2025
swissmiss went live on 27 May 2005. Twenty years is a long time. Congratulations.
That was Tina v1.0; No kids, single, hadn’t started any businesses yet. This blog opened doors. Forever grateful.
Blogs open doors, still, even today. disassociated was opening doors for me way back in 2010:
If you’re onto a good thing you’ll be doing far more than merely writing and posting articles.
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disassociated is listed in the Internet Phone Book: call me on 492
19 May 2025
Image courtesy of Ana Šantl.
disassociated has been included in the inaugural edition of the Internet Phone Book, a directory of over seven-hundred personal websites and blogs, compiled by Kristoffer Tjalve, and Elliott Cost.
An annual publication for exploring the vast poetic web, featuring essays, musings and a directory with the personal websites of hundreds of designers, developers, writers, curators, and educators.
You don’t read a great deal of poetry on my website, but Tjalve and Cost offer a definition of poetic in this interview with Meg Miller of Are.na, publishers of the book.
Being a phone directory, each listed website naturally comes with a “phone number”, a three digit code allocated by the authors, a kind of short-cut link, that lets you “call” through, I’m on 492.
As of the time I type, the book has sold out through the publisher’s website (I think another print is in the works), though it is available from selected stockists across Europe, and in South Korea.
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Ye Olde Blogroll is sporting a swish new design
18 April 2025
Check it out. In addition, Ray, creator of the algorithm-free web directory of personal websites and blogs, which lists this website (thanks again), has transferred ownership to Manuel Moreale, he of People and Blogs fame, among other things.
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blogs, design, IndieWeb, technology
Social media and the rest, a personal website is best
11 April 2025
Mike Sass, writing at Shellsharks:
A website, your own personal website, is just like this—a digital home, on the web. With all the same comforts, familiarities and problems that need a-fixin’.
Does your personal website, your blog, feel like home? Mine does, and always has.
Although I’ve long been a social media participant, albeit not a particularly active one, the prospect of abandoning this website to go all in on a social media platform, maybe even several, never once crossed my mind. This even as I watched contemporaries do exactly that, and go on to sometimes garner large followings.
I always viewed the social media platforms I was a member of as outposts for my website. Like garden sheds (dare I say outhouses) you might build in the garden outside your home. Fragile structures that may not withstand a storm, in the same way a house can. Or the erratic whims of a billionaire owner. To say nothing of inconsistent moderation policies and erratic algorithms.
Owning and maintaining a house, home, is extra work and cost, but a far better investment than all those garden sheds.
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blogs, IndieWeb, self publishing, social media
An old school blogger returns, the Oceania Web Atlas launches
10 April 2025
American designer Jason Santa Maria, and co-founder of A Book Apart, a seller of numerous influential design publications, has returned to blogging after an eight year hiatus. You see, we all come back eventually. Once a blogger, always a blogger…
Philipp Lunch is based in Cologne, Germany, and recently launched a blog/personal website, despite it being not finished, and preferring to let it evolve. Yes, that is the trajectory of many a personal website. Australian physicist Cameron Jones’ website comes with the eye-catching name Caffeine and Lasers. He also has a shot at answering the question of the ages: where are all the aliens? Hmm, what do you think? Are they giving us the silent treatment, or are we very, very, lucky to be here?
Caleb Herbert resides in Missouri, in the Unites States. Instead of a smartphone, he keeps a notepad and pen in his pocket. Bet you weren’t expecting to hear that. Portland based American software developer Sage has been online since 2013, and is constantly redesigning their website. Remember those long ago days when we used to redesign our websites like every week?
Why we are still using 88 × 31 buttons? Website buttons (that’s what I’ll call them), particularly those with the dimension of 88 by 31 pixels, used to adorn personal websites during the late 1990’s. They pretty much disappeared during the blogging era, but thanks to Indie Web/Small Web, and the personal website revival, are enjoying a resurgence. 88 by 31 pixels may not seem like much of a canvas to work with, but as the works posted on Button Wall go to show, an economy of size is no inhibitor to creativity.
A week or two ago, Melbourne, Australia, based author and content creator Zachary Kai launched the Oceania Web Atlas, a web directory for bloggers and personal website publishers, based in the Oceania region. If you’re a local, submit your website. Thanks for including mine Zach.
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blogosphere, blogs, IndieWeb, self publishing, SmallWeb
Some blogs are digital gardens, but not all of them
31 March 2025
Brisbane, Australia, based blogger Colin Morris, writing about website analogies:
My site isn’t a garden. I’ve seen garden sites, tended to grow and sprout and flower. Ordered in rows or disordered in natural growth.
disassociated is not a garden, a digital garden, either.
A digital garden could be seen as progression, an evolution even, of blogs and personal websites. Whereas content on blogs — old school blogs like this one — is usually considered complete when published, a digital garden’s content is often a work in progress. Articles, or posts, which start out as seedlings, are added to as research into their subject matter continues, or new information comes to light. It’s a sensible approach since knowledge is never complete.
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