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Comment by softwaredoug | Hacker News Reader

It all changed when marketing firms latched onto "blogging"

Now it's sadly the case a lot of blogs don't have a lot of content, are full of SEO boilerplate, with click-bait headlines instead of being interesting or well written. Some blogs are great, well-written lead ins that end with "to get the end of this story, contact our sales person for a demo!". Or there's the form that pops up that really, really wants your email address for a GREAT newsletter!

I think when a company has a 'blog' it really needs to fulfill a contract of actually providing useful, interesting content. It's the only way, honestly, your brand will build long term trust. Otherwise don't call it a 'blog' call it 'marketing information' or something...

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I don't think it changed at all. It's not like the old bloggers became marketing bloggers. They didn't change. The marketing blogs just became a new thing, a separate thing.

I don't think I've ever been confused between the two, despite them both being called blogs.

It's pretty obvious that a personal blog is one thing, and a company blog is another. They're both "weblogs", neither has a greater right to the name.

"I don't think it changed at all. It's not like the old bloggers became marketing bloggers"

The old bloggers all just moved on. Or at least the vast majority of them did. The number of terrible blogs are legion.

Everyone has a motivation for the things they do, and a lot of the time the motivation for a blog is professional credibility/development, and for the self-employed, more directly in "leads" and good business.

Neither works out. After your dozen-th time on the front-page of HN you realize it works the same as always -- a lot of passing, casual readers who might find the content exemplary but...eh. There was a time when those people would become regulars because you showed that you make good content, but it's just unnecessary now. Just watch HN and Reddit and if they make something good again, maybe it'll appear there.

> The old bloggers all just moved on. Or at least the vast majority of them did.

Did they? Or do they just make up a decreasing fraction of blogs? I've got 95 blogs in my feed reader. My guess is that I've been subscribed to most of them for more than five years, but still about 80% of them posted within the last year (an arbitrary cut-off point, but I don't think it's fair to call something dead if it only ever showed signs of life a couple times a year in its prime).

The change is the lower signal to noise on Google, Twitter, etc. So discoverability of good blog articles becomes ever tougher given how much crap is out there. This discourages new bloggers...

Everything ruined when money get involves. It always dilute the value of something into money making machine 'trend' for some get rich quick marketer, they milk it dry(or try to), often in a spammy, tasteless way, then move on to(ruin) something new. What a shallow society we live in.

> Everything ruined when money get involves.

Actually, you won't see much content if the creators don't get paid.

So the problem is how to get money to them.

Patreon is still one of the very few success stories here, depositing over 90% of contributions directly to creators.

> Actually, you won't see much content if the creators don't get paid.

This is definitely not true. There are plenty of people who like to share their work without any monetary reward (be it either direct or indirect, building their personal 'brand' etc.), but who do it just for the fun of sharing and communicating with each other.

The extreme focus on startups, earning money with your special thing, etc. that is common here is not representative for the whole world. There are plenty of people who can do without that. At least, it used to be that way. I'll admit that this 'get rich online' culture that is prevalent here is spreading more and more to the rest of society.

I mean this is like the Rock Auto newsletter. It's unabashedly a bunch of sales spiel about their newest discounts, with one fun anecdotal story, a picture of a contestants car, and a pop quiz on obscure car knowledge. I love it!

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