September 5th, 2024

Where Did All the Tech Bloggers Go?

Dillon Shook reflects on the decline of tech bloggers due to social media's rise, aims to promote diverse voices, and commits to publishing 100 blog posts to support young developers.

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Where Did All the Tech Bloggers Go?

Dillon Shook reflects on the decline of tech bloggers, attributing it to the rise of social media and aggregator sites. He notes that he has not actively sought out individual tech bloggers since the decline of popular blogs like Coding Horror. In an effort to rediscover valuable voices in tech, he embarked on a search for bloggers who write about topics of interest. He compiled a list of notable tech bloggers, emphasizing the need for more diversity in the tech blogging community. Inspired by this exploration, Shook has committed to blogging regularly, aiming to publish one post per week until he reaches 100 posts. His goal is to enhance his writing and communication skills while contributing to the developer community, particularly targeting younger full-stack web developers. He encourages readers to envision their long-term progress in any endeavor they start, highlighting the importance of persistence and continuous improvement.

- The decline of tech bloggers is linked to the rise of social media and aggregator sites.

- Dillon Shook is on a mission to find and promote diverse tech bloggers.

- He has set a personal goal to publish 100 blog posts, aiming for one per week.

- Shook's blogging will focus on topics relevant to the younger full-stack web development community.

- He emphasizes the value of persistence in personal and professional growth.

Link Icon 4 comments
By @ChainOfFools - 4 months
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

By @insane_dreamer - 5 months
Ben Thompson should be on that list https://stratechery.com/
By @teamtestbot - 4 months
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