The Value of Blogging

Joan Westenberg’s post, The Case for Blogging in the Ruins has been working around the ‘blogosphere’. Is the blogosphere even a thing anymore? It used to be massive, which is exactly the point of Westernberg’s piece.

I’ve blogged for decades now. The early Blogger and Movable Type accounts are gone now. Some of the latter I saved, but despite not having a full archive here on this site, there is certainly enough.

Over the years my blogging has had different foci, probably reflecting the growth and change in me and my own interests over the years. My blogging has also been influenced by short-form social media, in that most of my posts now are short. I rarely have the time or motivation to put forward a longer think-piece.

Westenberg says this in their post about what makes a blog work:

“They build. The best blogs create posts that reference and extend earlier posts, developing ideas over time rather than starting from scratch each week. Gwern’s site is an extreme example, with entries that get updated for years, accumulating evidence and refinement. But even a modest version of this works: a body of work that compounds.”

To confirm this, I can refer back to a post I made on August 14, 2018, Blogging As an Exercise in Thought where I also talk about my history of blogging. I’m reminded by this post that I also hosted a blog on Blot for a number of years! There we go, my blog has supported my own memory!

I still read many blogs every day, mainly via RSS. I still prefer them to social media. I hope that they don’t wither and die completely, and that people will continue to find ways to use the medium to build their own long-lasting presence on the web.

I appreciate Westenberg’s post and I hope that I will find time to blog a little more this year.