Personal blogs are back, should niche blogs be next?
Mood
informative
Sentiment
positive
Category
tech_discussion
Key topics
Blogging
Personal Blogs
Niche Blogs
Online Content
Discussion Activity
Very active discussionFirst comment
49m
Peak period
66
Day 1
Avg / period
35.5
Based on 71 loaded comments
Key moments
- 01Story posted
Nov 21, 2025 at 5:40 PM EST
2d ago
Step 01 - 02First comment
Nov 21, 2025 at 6:29 PM EST
49m after posting
Step 02 - 03Peak activity
66 comments in Day 1
Hottest window of the conversation
Step 03 - 04Latest activity
Nov 23, 2025 at 3:10 AM EST
23h ago
Step 04
Generating AI Summary...
Analyzing up to 500 comments to identify key contributors and discussion patterns
Is it? I haven't seen anyone in my circle return to blogging, nor kids of this generation.
Discoverability is going to be a massive problem, since search engines are dead. Maybe word-of-mouth through social media is enough?
I sometimes compare Mediawiki vs SharePoint to Web x.0 vs WAIS n Gopher.
One is light on resources, storing just the information with some formatting hints, leaving presentation to standards and the other is SharePoint. The comparison is really about bloat, not functionality, but the two are intertwined.
Playing telephone has now been automated ...
The only exception is Bluesky because it does not have algorithmic feeds, but technical content does not do well as most technical people did not migrate.
Not sure if you're looking for a hosted solution, though. A lot of those would involve you running your own server.
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Internet_forum_s...
Exploit ridden PHPNuke & e107 CMS too.
https://joeldare.com/why-im-writing-pure-html-and-css-in-202...
Today, you’re talking to an audience that is online, willing to venture outside social media, and opting to actively read content rather than passively listen or watch. That’s far from everyone and that’s okay.
We had the time around when blogspot was a thing when everyone and their dog had a blog. It was mainstream enough for "Julie and Julia". It was a different time.
*You changed your post and now mine doesn't make sense anymore. I forgive you but don't do it again.
The point should be connecting people to other people and their creativity, not just connecting people to content which may or may not be vomited out by generative AIs.
Yes, but - there were lots of people who got online in other to blog. Livejournal, blogspot and others were the reason some of their mothers did get online. It was that mainstream!
The previous poster might also consider all the high profile, independent, and influential publications across various subjects that grew out of blogging – e.g. HuffPo, Pitchfork, Jezebel, so many video gaming and entertainment sites... many of which were sadly bought up by rich idiots and/or existing media conglomerates.
It’s got just the features you need, is built by a solo dev, and it’s got a very fair split between free and paid features. I used it to put up my personal site and have been very happy with the experience.
Feels very nihilistic.
There's certainly a difference between making useful content for the love of it and making content because you think there's an opportunity to get something out of that (that could be money, but it could also just be appreciation or someone reading your work).
It's demoralising to not get any views on your hard work, and in this economic environment it sometimes feels more worth your time to do any other activity.
You may be the counter-proof to that and I enjoy your blog! But, also a lot of what makes your content useful is timing with depth and that's something that AI can't beat yet
It's probably similar to the street-side musician. In old times, he may have been the only musician around you might hear. Nowadays, he's got to compete with a perfect recording of Hotel California by the Eagles.
Over time, a lot of companies figured out that if they start posting content-farmed articles on notionally non-commercial topics, this drives people to their website, so you ended up with billions of pages like this: thecleaningauthority . com/blog/how-to-clean/the-ultimate-guide-to-cleaning-pillows-and-pillo/ (remove spaces if you really want to).
And then LLMs brought down the marginal cost of cranking out content on any conceivable topic basically to zero, so you're all of sudden competing with 500 companies publishing spammy guitar maintenance advice. It's not that search engines want to show that stuff, but it's hard for them to tell.
But the incentive for search engines to pick profitable results over quality results has only gotten stronger over time.
Just imagine a world where your one-person, part-time, labor-of-love guitar-maintenance blog were the top search result, simply because it had the best content. Democratizing access to information was the original promise of the web. I don't think we're there anymore, and I don't think it's correct to let search engines off the hook because their lucrative job has gotten harder.
I have an RSS feed of personal blogs which I really enjoy.
I also refuse to go to LiveNation type concerts. I only go to local musicians charging $10 at the door.
I don't even do it on principle. Corporate entertainment (including blogs) often feels formulaic to me. I find that Medium sucks the life out of good writers for some reason.
Am I supposed to advertise it with the icon explicitly or is it enough if the URL works? What do you generally look for?
If you like this sort of thing, find a blog you like and contact the author to tell them you enjoy their work.
One thing I failed to notice was that RSS was still active. So this year, I started consistently contributing, over 150 so far, and I see RSS picking up right where it left off [0]. A lot of my blog post suck, but I write them as an observation and my current understanding of a subject. Readers have agency to skip what they don't like and only read what they like.
Note this shows me how many RSS readers have accessed my RSS daily. I can't actually track each person, although I have a report I'm working on for the end of the year.
I don't think personal blogs are back.
I am running my blog since 2018 and it has never been better :)
Even if you wanted to go back to blogging, you'd have to do it on substack, medium or some such platform with social built in.
My money is blogging being mostly for SEO. I don't know who's on the other end of the clicks, but they aren't reading for readings sake..
Kottke is one of the better known blogs that does not have a specific speciality.
It seems like you'd get traffic from search engines a few years back, but now the only traffic I've had is from a HN post.
Everything points to optimizing for "AEO" for LLMs now
Blogging kind of was better in the past.
I also remember geocities. It was kind of cool.
Neocities unfortunately does not really capture that old spirit. It's just ... different.
I’ve maintained my own domain since 2010 and know plenty of others that still do as well
My page is one of my favorite places on the internet cause it’s in my opinion the original purpose of the internet which is to share your personal research and places to document and share personal ideas with infinite distribution.
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