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Ribbonfarm Is Retiring

(www.ribbonfarm.com)
177 points Arubis | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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blfr ◴[] No.41890886[source]
It seems to me that the blogosphere was not a ZIRP but rather a young Internet phenomenon. Which could exists, like usenet before it, when mere access to it was a filtering mechanism.

Once you have seven billion people with virtually no access control, you can't have a public blogosphere, and groups retreat to the cozyweb.

Either way, I enjoyed it while it lasted. Thanks for the Office series!

https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...

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spaceman_2020 ◴[] No.41893121[source]
The public blogosphere died because of Google, simple as. Once search stopped prioritizing blogs over bloated, SEO-optimized slop, traffic to blogs died and discoverability was limited to you spamming your posts everywhere.
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1. lenderton ◴[] No.41894070[source]
Google bought Blogger in 2003; that was the main blogging service for a long time in the US, at least. Google not being able to optimize search results for their own hosted content implies...a lack of overall content available. It used to be a lot better in the earlier days, for ROMs and especially album downloads blogs would pop up all the time in the results. It's just that there are a lot more people online now, and more accompanying spam, and also the fact that Google delists any sort of "download" type site by default - which used to be a substantial subcategory of blogs.

People forget how "tightened up" the web is nowadays, or many just aren't old enough to remember. It wasn't 10 years ago that Fox News would archive full, uncensored ISIS videos on their website - which is kind of insane, when you think about it.

Average age of first phone ownership is really young these days, which is arguably the #1 factor in everything online becoming a closed system for sheep.

On the other hand, no parents want their 11-year-old wandering into videos of hostages being burned alive. Or getting solicited for photos etc. So the internet is kind of dying for the sake of real life.

You can always search old blogspots. https://www.searchblogspot.com