Ask YC: Why don't you write a blog? | Hacker News Reader

Ask YC: Why don't you write a blog?

I have many friends, who read blogs actively, but don't write their own. I tried convincing them how blogging is a great process to define and refine your thoughts, how it is a great platform to meet new people and build a community, how it is your a new type of resume, and lot more...

But still, they don't write a blog. They agree there are lots of advantages, but they still just don't act on it.

Are you also who read lots of blogs, read all YC News, but don't write your own thoughts? If so, why is that? What's stopping you from writing a blog?

Why do you just consume the information and don't produce some?

Please discuss your thoughts.

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99.9% of blogs are crap, including mine. I write it mostly for myself and to polish my English (not my native tongue). I don't believe one should be looking for "advantages" when deciding to start a blog. I hate to see what blogs are turning into: they aren't personal anymore and look more like expanded resumes. Blogs used to be just that: a personal diary of what's going on. And silly things like "Rails Blog" or "Java Blog" just don't make sense: why would someone keep a blog like that - nothing is happening in their life besides Rails or Java?

In fact, let's be honest: a blog is just a buzzword. "Homepages" have been around forever, why rename them into something which isn't even a real English word. Before '03 corporate websites had a page called "News", now they call it a "blog" and make it look a little bit more personal.

After about 3 years of this "citizen journalism" I went back to slashdot, they provide more than enough of daily time wasting material. Real news are in books, never mind that they happened in the past, at least they're true and delivered to you professionally.

And finally, I don't trust "blogs". Even my modest page with 40 daily accidental readers attracts an email from a PR firm every once in a while, asking me to promote some BS they're getting paid for. I can only imagine how it's like for someone with 10K+ monthly uniques.. Most of these "bloggers" are cheap part-time journalists armed with inflated egos but lacking skills/time to check their facts and, sometimes, their spelling.

Why should anyone be interested in your personal happenings?

On the other hand, if you have some perspective to contribute about Rails development, the value proposition to the reader is much clearer.

Daniel

Because a personal weblog probably should be most interesting to friends and family, people close to the writer.

"... I write it mostly for myself and to polish my English ..."

I use my blog to 'try' and polish my ideas.

Funny things happen when you write them down. The ideas that sound great in your head suddenly appear trivial, less substantial. That's why working on them in blog format is a good idea. You get to throw ideas around for others to read, comment. Shred. Some work, others get shot down or in the process you find better ones. The ones that work can attract comment. This is where you can make improvements or just kill them.

Ideas can be polished far easier under the wear of others scrutiny.

"Blogs used to be just that: a personal diary of what's going on. And silly things like "Rails Blog" or "Java Blog" just don't make sense: why would someone keep a blog like that - nothing is happening in their life besides Rails or Java?"

I disagree. Fewer people care about what you did last weekend than if you wrote a cool new library for Ruby. Blogs help connect people with shared interests and what's wrong with writing about your interest in programming? I think your definition of what a blog should be is pretty narrow and it excludes a big part of the blogsphere that people care about.

"I hate to see what blogs are turning into: they aren't personal anymore and look more like expanded resumes. "

Why are you restricting blog's definition to only personal diary. Things evolve. Whoever said initially that it's a personal diary didn't know that it can evolve to any extent.

What's wrong in writing your learnings or insights on any professional or niche topic? What's wrong if I spent lots of time in learning some Java hack and sharing it with community so that they don't have to invest same amount of time that I have invested?

I think your view-point is extreme. There are always handful bloggers who write great analysis of particular topic genuinely. It's totally in reader's control to decide what to read and what to pass.

You know, given the context, I'm going to throw out a spurious analogy:

Maybe writing a blog bears some small resemblance to doing a startup. It takes more time than is reasonable, in the average case nobody else really notices, and once in a while it will propel a (partially-random) someone to fame and fortune. In other words, it's only really worth it for the sense of personal satisfaction it will give you.

Maybe it's my sense of self-preservation, preventing me from maintaining too many irrational behaviours simultaneously?

>It takes more time than is reasonable

True. For me at least I spent somewhere between 5-8 hours on each 500-800 word post. This seems to be pretty standard among top bloggers from what I've read. Most people decide to hit the back button in less than five seconds, so your first couple paragraphs especially have to be almost unreasonably well written and polished.

>in the average case nobody else really notices

If your blog is good then people notice surprisingly fast. You'd think that guys like Scoble wouldn't start reading your blog until you had 10,000 RSS subscribers. But in reality it's the guys like Scoble who spend eight hours a day reading blogs who are the first to find and link to your blog. There are some strange forces at play that I haven't quite figured out, but for whatever reason your first 250 RSS subscribers are pretty much guaranteed to be (on average) more intelligent and successful than you.

>once in a while it will propel a (partially-random) someone to fame and fortune.

While it's pretty difficult to get people to recognize your name, it's also really easy to get people to recognize one of your ideas. Getting on the front page of Hacker News isn't that hard if you are writing good stuff. Whether you make the front page of Reddit and Digg is mostly random these days, but if you consistently write good stuff then it will happen a bunch of times, you just can't really predict when.

I'm definitely going to start updating my blog again eventually. But I'd much rather post nothing than post stuff that isn't insightful. For some reason bloggers who write frequently gain a disproportionate share of RSS subscribers. This is really unfortunate and in many ways represents a huge failing of RSS. But because your first few RSS subscribers are going to be the most important for your career, it seems worth it to stick with only posting insightful stuff even if you occasionally have nothing to say for weeks on end.

I blog, but not for any of the reasons you mentioned. I blog because I greatly enjoy writing and I greatly enjoy explaining my ideas to others.

It sounds clichéd perhaps, but you should write because you enjoy writing, not because you want to achieve all the secondary stuff that comes after you've written stuff for a long time and finally accumulated all those bells and whistles.

Daniel

100% of the stuff on my publicly-visible CMS (not a blog!) is stuff I think I will need again one day. All of those handy one liners, administration commands and the occasional longer piece go there - every time I have to look something up or do a bit of research I try and make a note of it.

The reason being that there is almost nothing worse than having to, 6 months later, do exactly the same research over again because you can't quite remember how you figured it out last time :/

The publicly visible bit is just because, well, I am documenting it anyway so I might as well let google index it. I always find it slightly amusing when I'm searching for an answer and one of my own solutions comes up that I had totally forgotten about.

As a result readership is very low (about 10k users/20k pages per month) but I'm not really bothered as I'm not selling advertising or looking for revenue or fame :)

I pretty much get everything I would get out of blogging by posting on news.yc. Unless your blog has upmod/downmod arrows, it's hard to beat the feedback here.

Technocrati rank is kind of like karma isn't it?

Like most writing (including code) I think running a blog requires a fair amount of hubris. I'm not saying that's necessarily a bad thing, but ...

I used to be very optimistic ("global village", etc) about the Internet, newsgroups, blogs, but now it seems that most of the time, communication drives people into irreconcilable factions. Too many people bring limited reading comprehension skills with them, and end up violently agreeing with each other or creating conflict for absolutely no reason. Most discussions seem to descend all too quickly into name-calling ("fanboy", etc) and I personally fail to see the value in it.

The best blogs start with some simple questions: do I have anything of value to contribute? Am I an interesting person who has achieved something noteworthy? Do I have unique insights or am I just recycling the zeitgeist? For most bloggers, I suspect the answer to all those questions is "no", and (although they can keep going if they like) there's precious little reason to actually read them.

"Why do you just consume the information and dont produce some?"

Blogs are not an appropriate medium for publishing every kind of information. What about people who write books, essays, reports or even user manuals? Are they just "consuming information"?

Writing a blog takes dedication and time. It is not for everyone. I've started three, and couldn't keep up with any of them.

> Writing a blog takes dedication and time.

Yes. I've also discovered that blogging has to be done very frequently to obtain a significant audience. For example, Paul Kedrosky ( http://paul.kedrosky.com/ ) sometimes posts three times per day, seven days per week. I'd rather spend my time doing extended programming sessions. I'm also inclined to write 4000 word epics rather than 100 word stream-of-consciousness posts, so the medium isn't optimal for my style. Finally, I'm not keen on blogging's inherent chronological structure. However, the advent tagging has offset this issue.

That's just one method. There are numerous successful blogs that post much more rarely, much weightier posts. E.g.:

http://www.stevepavlina.com http://www.randsinrepose.com

To name but two.

4000 words might be a bit hard to digest for a blog post, but there's a happy medium in 1000-2000 words which you don't need to publish every day (or even several times a week, as Rands has shown), so long as it's worth reading.

Daniel

Because serious blogging is very hard. I write a blog and it's hard. It takes a lot of time, dedication and effort. But I still like it.

What I hate about blog: Authors are mostly full of ego and does little fact check on what they are ranting about. Reading blogs turn out most of the time to be a great waste of time.

Why don’t write a blog myself? If I have to I will write about my own projects; for now I’m too busy. I generally prefer forums if I want to give my opinion on specific subject.

I see my blog as a resume, portfolio and a networking activity rolled into one. Resumes and portfolio do not tell others how you think, or what interests you nearly as well as a blog. And a blog is social and sharable, so it helps you make new contacts.

I like the idea of giving back...if you write a blog you give back. However, if someone doesn't think they will be able to add value with what they would give back, don't do it. There are so many sources of information out there that it actually does get tough to weed out the bad stuff. If you think you can produce good content, write a blog, if not, don't. Very simple.

The desire to write a blog (and keep at it) comes from within. You must have a desire to consume the information and then spit it out again in a manner which you see as unique from other people. In some cases, that comes out in different ways (e.g. some people would start a podcast, but not a blog). Also, some people just aren't that into writing extensively.

Why do you assume that people who don't write blogs just "consumer the information"? I know plenty of people who produce information far more useful than the majority of silly blog posts (like code).

For some people, written communication can be quite challenging, but that doesn't mean that they aren't producing information, it just might not inside your view of the world.

It has to be gradual, there has to be some easy way to get pulled into it. Right now there's too much upfront investment of your time with almost no feedback for too long. And it will get only worse, as more blogs will compete for your attention.

I hope that twitter like services will break this trend.

I do write a blog. As tx observed earlier 99.9% of blogs are crap, including mine. Nonetheless I think it has been a worthwhile use of time, and I'll continue doing it for a while. Written communication skills are very important, an "essay" style of blog can exercise those skills whether anyone reads what I write or not.

The discipline of having to write it all down does certainly sharpen ones thoughts, and comments often supply links to other material on the topic. In my case commenters also point out ghastly errors I've made, but thats probably just me.

I just started my blog (its been work in progress for over a year now). I agree with several others that it takes time, and commitment to keep good content flowing. I spent almost all day yesterday putting out two posts. But if felt good. And its because its my way of giving something back. Some of the best information I gather is from blogs. Whether it be someone detailing the inner workings of rails routes to a one liner that saves you an hour of work. And they have helped me, so this is my way of helping someone back.

One of my blog posts details the issues I had trying to get Console2 to work the way I wanted it to. I wrote my experiences with it, and can hope that someone out there is having the exact same issue that I had, and benefit from it.

Creating new content is hard, writing well is even harder. A blog gives you the ability to work on both simultaneously. But on the flip side, who says it has to be brand new content? Write what you think is useful, maybe only to you. Treat it as a journal of thoughts, a repository of solutions to problems that you came across, a bank of opinions on things that matter to you, a list of articles that reverberated with you, it does not matter. What does matter is you being the authentic you.

Those who think most blogs are bs, yes, most are. But seriously, are you telling me that you have never come across a blog that worked for you? If yes, why couldn't that have been your blog?

I agree with Daniel that one should write to make things clearer to others. Putting an idea/suggestion/article under public (???) scrutiny is like cleaning up your house when your parents are coming over. You are forced to clean up your act, maintain focus and continuity and ensure that everything is its place.

In conclusion, blog if you feel the need. Blog if you think you have something useful to say, or add to a discussion, or even "retweet" (or reblog, in this case). I have had several people begin following me on twitter, probably because I retweet a lot. I act as a news filter/trusted source for those who dont want to have to read everything @techcrunch puts up. And if you don't want that, unfollow, or unsubscribe. But it takes time, it takes effort on my part, and it may detract you from what you should have been doing.

Hopefully I answered some questions here.

I write a blog, it's in Russian and not very programming-related. No blog in English, because I haven't found my own voice in English. Everything I write seems obvious and silly.

Keep blogging in English if you want to find your voice.

I write a blog that I take fairly seriously and maintain well. As others have said, it's a huge commitment. At the moment I've been dealing with final exams and now vacation, but usually I spend 4 hours/day on my blog. Not that I post every day or multiple times per day, it's just keeping up with the news that might be involved in a later post, building something to write about, reviewing something, etc.

Few people can succeed with a blog that merely parrots back information that came from elsewhere. I would suggest spending those 4 hours a day actually doing something that you can write about.

Browsing news for 4 hours a day isn't really research, more likely to be procrastination.

Daniel

when i said 4hrs/day I didn't mean reading stuff.. I meant actually writing stuff or working on things that I would write about

I used to hate the idea of having a blog because every other blog I read strikes me as "This person is really full of themselves, and not that important."

Yet there were things I wanted to talk about, including things I'd invented.

So I struck a compromise: I treat my blog like a newspaper about things, and not me. Which is good, since I'm more boring than even the most boring newspaper.

Most of the entertaining things I could write would be bad for my general reputation, so I don't write them.

I do have a blog, although I am not very consistent with posts. Mainly I dont really have the time to maintain a blog.

On a side not I am very active on twitter http://twitter.com/dodeja (micro-blogging seems to work for many non-bloggers)

I'm starting mine to make a clear separation on which ideas or knowledge belongs to my employer and which can be public, and therefore, I may reuse it later. I really don't care too much on who read them but on publishing them.

it's a simple roi issue: would i rather spend a lot of time writing something which (most likely) no one could care less to read vs programming something new / cool ?

the choice is almost a no brainer at this point in time.

I don't know about everyone else here; but I like to read YC while I'm figuring out other problems. If I'm typing something up, I'd prefer to write code than prose.

Stevey on why you should blog:

http://steve.yegge.googlepages.com/you-should-write-blogs

I would rather be outside, away from my computer, participating in the community that's around me. nothing beats human contact.

I play Diplomacy. That's already a lot of text (i.e. negotiations) to write.

Posting your thoughts here is a virtual blog.

And you have company.

No time for promotion.

But I do post every once and a while.

Anybody want to read my thoughts more completely expressed?

Well, there you have it.

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