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Comment by narag | Hacker News Reader

A few years ago there was that blogs thing, with rss... all things that favoured federation, independent content generation, etc. Now it's all about platforms. I understand that "regular people" are more comfortable with Facebook but, other than that, why are blogs and forums less popular now?

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The problem with forums is that you end visiting 5~10 different forums, each with their own login, and some of them might be restricted at work (not that you should visit them often).

So it's easier to have 2~4 aggregators in where all the information you desire resides, even if in each of them there are different forums.

A unified entry point helps adoption.

So, instead of platforms, other option would be a client software for different forums. Like Tapatalk. Is there anything like that but libre and/or desktop?

Reddit really did a good job of moving the masses away from site-specific forums.

rss

I'd argue that forums and blogs require more effort.

Read a cool blog post? Nobody around you will ever give a shit, because in order to do so, they'd have to read it too. Shared a photo from a vacation? It might start a conversation or two with people around you, while you receive dozens or hundreds of affirmations (in the form of likes).

I don't like to use social networks, but that's what I fall back on when I have a few minutes to spare. I rarely look at my list of articles I've saved for later — who has time for that?

>I don't like to use social networks, but that's what I fall back on when I have a few minutes to spare. I rarely look at my list of articles I've saved for later — who has time for that?

Plenty of people. Ever push an article to a reader view service and see how long it takes to read? Most articles posted here on HN or the nyt front page can be read in 3-5 mins. Occasionally you'd get a 20 min slog.

I used to use social media way more, and by far my biggest wastes of time on the platform were those spare minutes you get a dozen times a day. On the elevator, waiting for the bus, waiting on food, anytime I could sit still the phone went out and my head went down because that's what everyone around me was also doing while waiting on their coffee.

Eventually I realized I was just idly scrolling and not retaining anything at all from those 30s-2m sessions on instagram. Just chomping visual popcorn. Now, anytime I have a spare 10 mins, I'll read an article or two from my reading list. Anytime I have less than a spare 10 mins, I'll twiddle my thumbs and keep the phone in the pocket.

I used to be much more scatterbrained and had trouble winding down for the evening and getting good rest. Now, I feel like a monk.

the problem is multiple actually: a) most internet-connected devices these days favor content consumption vs content creation (blogs vs instagram),

b) mainstream culture > closely-knit communities (facebook > forums)

c) big-player takeovers (facebook for groups, google for search) over previously somewhat niche areas and, actually, internet infrastructure

d) if you're not a big player, you don't exist... and back to c)

> a) most internet-connected devices these days favor content consumption vs content creation (blogs vs instagram),

You chose Instagram as your example, to make the point that phones favor consumption over creation?

Yes! Instagram has the appearance of a OC/creation platform, but, typically of such platforms (such as twitter/fb) the "content" is low-effort "convenient" opportunistic trivia, and the product consumed is likes, followers, etc.

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