Where did all the tech bloggers go?

I would add one of my guilty pleasures, Xah Lee, who still updates his unironically retro blog quite regularly, although a lot of his content is in vlog format as well.

Sadly he may not actually be as earnestly nutty in person as his online persona would suggest.

https://xahlee.org

Ben Thompson should be on that list https://stratechery.com/

Honestly, a lot of it is what he hinted at: The rise of social media, as well as the pivot to video. Very few people read blogs any more in comparison, whether for attention span reasons or because self-scrolling videos are an easier medium to consume and share, etc. Lots of tech bloggers simply just moved onto those formats.

I've found it harder over time to keep maintaining my own site, because the engagement dropped off rapidly over a decade or so ago and I just pretty much log in to clear out spam from the moderation queue. But I keep going as much for myself (having to remember what I did on this or that project a few years ago) as for having a little repository of knowledge for people who are building stuff.

It is still very hard to beat a static text format for searchability and archiveability, IMO. Forums moving to Facebook/Reddit then Discord is making knowledge more and more ephemeral. And videos are very hard to search and hunt down the exact moment you're looking for in comparison.

So it's a continual uphill battle of blogging only for passion reasons.

Selfish promotion, of course: https://www.etotheipiplusone.net