PS: This article focuses directly on the end.
Search for topics related to blog building, running, and technology, and the timeline is pulled back seven or eight years. After the closure of the netease blog, the people who sing the decline of the blog finally saw the dusk. Nowadays, few people, except technical workers, bother with a blog site, and the disappearance of blog hosting platforms also means that the public and blog are increasingly separated from each other.
I somehow have a “blog plot”. The truth is that I prefer the “self-hosted” form of content publishing. Blogs are just close to the ideal. Self-hosting means I can control everything on the site, post, modify, and delete. More importantly, I can do some weird things. Insert a dynamic JS into the article, pull an animation in, or insert a video (real-name mocking public video insert way).
Admittedly, blogging, or self-hosted content publishing, is a thing of the past. So, why?
Two groups of people
From the perspective of content production, there are two kinds of people: the publisher (blogger) and the acquirer (reader).
By building your own blog, you are being pulled into the perspective of the publisher. What are the needs of the publisher, the blogger or the purpose of the creation? Whether it’s sharing knowledge or organizing for myself, it’s just that I want others to see what I’ve written. That’s the basic need. As you go out there are revenue issues, construction costs, running costs, all sorts of things.
Pull the point of view back, back to the point of view of the taker. The most common situation is that you are searching for a tutorial or error handling method, and you will open a search engine, type, Enter, Bing! There must be a few personal blogs in the search results. Such a situation is estimated to be uncommon outside the technology community, more hundred number, Zhihu and even wechat public account occupied the view. So what are the core requirements of the acquirer? Find what I need in the least amount. To be specific, it could be a tutorial, a q&A, or just hanging out to kill time. Therefore, the purpose of the acquirer can be divided into two categories, purposive (search information) and non-purposive (just look around).
Where did it all go?
Now that the age of blogging is over, where are the people and content creation that used to belong? This question is actually very easy to answer, just take out a search engine can answer, like Zhihu, public accounts, nuggets of UGC community into the mainstream of content hosting. These sites will create an edit box for you to create content in for Posting on their platform. But it’s not that simple.
The location of content publishing, the difference between self-hosted and unself-hosted content publishing, is here. Go back to the two main needs of publishers and takers. From the point of view of the acquirer, that is, the reader, the viewer, the audience. Non-targeted content consumption has taken up a large part of the time spent on mobile phones. Take a look at your current mobile phone usage statistics to see if UGC platforms such as B station, Douyin and Toutiao have taken up a large part. These platforms do a great job of answering the unintentional needs of users, simple, mindless, and in a world that shares my interests. Someone posted a similar barrage to me, someone had the same comment as me. This is probably what netease Cloud commented, and IT home also commented on similar operating trends – comments are more important than the text.
Meet the purposeful reader. Search engines basically represent intentional user behavior, even if it’s a site search, that’s a search box. Search engines are probably the main entry point for most independent blogs today. What matters most to the purposeful content of the answer, short, straight and fast. Content is not too long, can directly answer the question in the search box, quickly be found. When the content is scarce, some people still have patience to read blogs and wikipedias, but now it seems that Zhihu and Nuggets can answer questions more directly.
Then turn the station to the creator. What the creator needs most is expression, put the word code there, put it well, it’s better for someone to look at it. UGC platform directly put an edit box, as long as you do not delete the content you write, the platform will not be inverted, the text will not be lost. As mentioned above, readers with no purpose need empathy, so these platforms have accumulated a lot of users, and these users have the habit of browsing these platforms, which is the most suitable for creators.
That’s it?
Say for a long time, transfer to the centralized creation of the website, give up the way of hosting the most appropriate, is it really?
The first is the platform’s self-deprecation. Limit the presentation of content. I forwarded a video from STATION B to wechat, and turned it over to guide me to download the APP. I’m the content creator. Did you ask me what I meant by all this? Competition between platforms does not mean a better environment, but emasculates the space and skills of creators. Finally, only the author’s helpless balance remains.
Search engines are dead
Also, the freedom of platform content is very low. Why don’t you put a poll in one of your station B videos? Try quoting a B station video in the public number? Even in the public account I put a link is troublesome to die. If it’s self-hosted, say blog. Basically what the browser can render, I can put on the page.
There are closed platform to show poor ability, search engines can not completely search the place is plenty of. A lot of quality articles are in the depths, submerged in robots.txt. Purposeful audience search a look, this search results are what network play ah. A lot of people make fun of the poor quality of the search, in fact the quality of the Internet feed to the search engine itself is not much high.
Search engines are dead
Have a sense of preparedness in times of peace. In the early days of blogging, some people complained about the limitations of blogging. Now it can be said that UGC is in its heyday. So what will be the form of content creation in the future? What’s the next stop?
End
| Since the escrow | UGC platform |
|---|---|
| Degrees of freedomhighBut construction is complicated | Degrees of freedomlowBut it works on the way up |
| Traffic only rely on search engines, there is no appropriate way to obtain traffic | Depending on the environment of the platform website itself, being “recommended” will have exposure |
| I call the shots on my turf | Vulnerable to platform audit, competition and cooperation between platforms |
| Easy to retrieve | Closed to tools such as search engines |
I saw a couple of posts about indie blogs on V2, and then I heard a blog about indie game producers, and I started thinking about these questions. I took the time to sort them out.