|
Felix has really been blathering on about the web for long enough now, so I thought it would be a service to everyone just to set the record straight on a couple of matters lest those unfortunate enough to rely on Felix for information come away with a fatally skewed webview.
It is not the end of blogging because it is too hard, as Felix claims. It's the end of blogging because it's too easy. Well, it's not really the end of blogging, just like the bursting of the tech bubble in 2000 was not the end of tech, but we are certainly witnessing historical highs in the average blog to post (b/p) ratio, and that is as good an indicator of impending disaster as p/e ratios were for tech companies.
Basically, everyone and their dog has now procured themselves a blog. It's disturbingly easy to get up and running on a standard-issue blogger account, and there are many local solutions that cater to the Englishly-challenged. When Felix complains that blogging is hard, what he really means is that it's damn hard to build one's own car, when in fact he should just buy one. Yes, so I help him, out of pity, because he so much wants to have a nice website, and after all, what are friends for, but Felix really has no business messing about with PHP if he is too damn lazy to R the FM, like I once did.
Insisting that PHP or CSS be easy is like getting angry at a piano if you can't play it. Strangely, Felix only takes offense when it comes to code: I haven't heard him rage against how damn difficult it is to build your own cellphone, or compose your own symphony. I think I know why: Felix fancies himself a man of letters, so any letters he can't understand really vex him.
As an aside, I would just like to take this moment to rubbish some Felixisms:
1) XHTML, RSS and CSS are not programming languages (I'm not telling what they are). What's more, they exist to separate style from content, which, if Felix were on the ball, he would be really happy about.
2) "Stefan in Sweden" was not in Sweden when he installed Felix's Movable Type. Stop pretending you have exotic friends, "Felix in New York."
3) "See those <div> tags? I half-understand what they do;" writes Felix. So, Felix, what part of div don't you understand?
But back to the main point of this post. To recap: There are too many blogs chasing too few ideas. People get caught up in the media hype, start up their own blog, and begin recording their inane lives in inarticulate splendor. Despite the bloggers' best efforts, readers don't just magically appear to fawn over their posts. The effort necessarily ends up flagging, for after all, is it not true that the blog was really just a vanity project? So the enthusiasm wanes, the posts start dropping in number, but because those with unexamined lives have a hard time admitting failure, the blog carries on, postless and unloved, and the b/p ratio rises.
Or as Felix puts it at the end of his post, "It's just too bloody difficult to ever become really popular." He is right on that point, and on this one: He'll always have air guitar.
According to Perseus Development, whoever they may be, of 4.12 million blogs on eight hosting services, 2.72 million haven't been updated in two months, and 1.09 million haven't been updated since the first day. So in that you're right: there are lots of abandoned blogs out there, and therefore your beloved b/p ratio is very high. But why is that such a bad thing? We've got a survival-of-the-fittest thing going on here. What I was complaining about is that the fittest, who survive, tend to be the kind of people who either pay a lot for someone else to design their site, or who can get their brains around baroque coding.
What Stefan doesn't seem to understand is that although there are lots of different types of cars and cellphones out there, there are very few blogging services, and it's almost impossible to tweak them to get your blog how you want it to be without getting your hands dirty with CSS, PHP and all the rest of it.
As for your rubbishings:
1) I never said that PHP and CSS were programming languages, because I knew that they weren't. I said that they were "essentially" programming languages, because learning how to code in them is tantamount to learning how to code in a programming language.
2) Stefan was in Sweden when he installed Moveable Type. Not when he transferred me to PHP from HTML, but when he got me started. The date was October 12, 2002: where were you then, Stefan?
3) I understand that tags tell the browser what style to use for the enclosed content. I don't understand what they stand for, how they work, or how they nest.
Posted by: Felix on October 7, 2003 09:38 PMInstapundit, with a look so ugly it must have fallen off the shelf it came from, rather undercuts your theory that only pretty blogs are successful.
Posted by: Matthew on October 7, 2003 09:45 PMYou might not like Instapundit, Matthew, but the fact is that it's professionally designed (by Sekimori, the same people who designed 2Blowhards) and uses a lot of PHP. It's most definitely not an off-the-shelf blog.
Posted by: Felix on October 7, 2003 10:03 PMPoint taken. But it looks bad, which in this context seems to me to be the same thing.
Posted by: Matthew on October 7, 2003 10:12 PMWell, I don't think Instapundit is badly designed. It's simple, loads quickly, is easy to read, and in general does just what it says on the tin. More importantly, it's pretty unique: it doesn't look like the Blogger or MT template lookalike sites (in the way that felixsalmon.com, for instance, does).
Posted by: Felix on October 7, 2003 10:24 PM1) Felix, calling markup "essentially" a programming language is like calling a dictionary "essentially" a novel. Don't even try to squirm your way out of that one.
3) Divs nest anywhere they damn well please.
Matthew, even ugly people sometimes get lucky.
Posted by: Stefan on October 7, 2003 10:28 PMHey, Stefan, we're on the same side on this one. Don't let your natural inclination to tell me I'm wrong get the better of ganging up on Felix.
Posted by: Matthew on October 7, 2003 10:32 PMStefan, if you think I thought that CSS was a programming language, then why do you think I used the word "essentially"?
Posted by: Felix on October 7, 2003 10:38 PMUm, I don't know, maybe because you know the meaning of the word "essentially"?
Posted by: Stefan on October 7, 2003 10:43 PMInteresting case of two professionally-designed blogs in completely different spheres which look extremely similar: The Kicker and the MIT Technology Review.
Posted by: Felix on October 8, 2003 03:15 PM