Alec Couros posted a quick throwaway on Facebook (I'd link to it, but Facebook doesn't work that way)
It got a lot of likes, and then the comment thread kind of exploded. I posted several comments and replies, and realized that was a silly way to post that particular discussion because it's exactly the kind of thing we are talking about as killing blogging and personal publishing.
I've pulled my comments together below. They're from various bits in the conversation, so don't necessarily flow as a single post. Whatever.
I've been thinking about the web we lost a LOT lately, but keep having a nagging feeling that some of it is nostalgia and romanticizing the good parts while overlooking the less good. I think we should learn from what was good (and so, so much was very good), learn from what wasn't as good, and move forward to build new goodness on modern tech.
I don't miss Reader. There are alternatives. I miss interesting people publishing coherent posts on diverse topics, rather than scattered like birdshot splattered across disconnected algorithmic streams on corporate silos.
I've been digging Medium. Haven't posted anything there, but it seems like a great mix of people and ideas (if a little heavy on the entrepreneur-fu articles). But I wonder what will happen to all of the posts after Verizon/Nokia/Facebook/Google buy it (eventually. It's the exit strategy of every web company on the planet now). Will it be shuttered? Improved? Stagnate and die?
Reader isn't the problem. People just stopped owning their words, publishing on their own websites. The internet archive for the last 5 years or so will largely be a gaping hole of dark matter where corporate silos like Facebook used to be.
And if someone didn't have tech skills, they didn't have a voice. And if they didn't want to put their thoughts out on the open web (where they could be used out of context, doxxed, harassed, etc) they weren't part of the conversation. There were reasons why the blogosphere (even the edublogosphere and openblogosphere) was dominated by white male professionals.
Readership is down by a few orders of magnitude as well. Back in the olden days, I often had thousands of people reading posts. Now, maybe 100 on a really busy day. Not sure what that means - I cross-post to Facebook and twitter, so I assume people just read the snippets there and don't click through to read the full thing. Summary blurbs, short attention span, moving on…