Blogging — at one’s own custom domain, as opposed to scribbling away over at Medium or penning an email newsletter — is cool!
Seriously, is it 2014, or 2004?
There’s a bit of a renaissance of real personal blogging here in NYC. Two of the original NYC bloggers have, after years of writing professionally and editing others, returned to their own blogs.
It started with Lockhart Steele, the founder of Curbed, Racked, and Eater, who started that media business on his personal blog.
Then the next day, Elizabeth Spiers, the founding editor/blogger at Gawker, dusted off her blog and started writing on it again.
And:
There is something about the personal blog, yourname.com, where you control everything and get to do whatever the hell pleases you. There is something about linking to one of those blogs and then saying something. It’s like having a conversation in public with each other. This is how blogging was in the early days. And this is how blogging is today, if you want it to be.
It feels so good to link to both of them.
I’ve heard blogs classified as a type of social media. Maybe that’s true, and maybe not — I don’t care.
What I do care about is that my blog isn’t part of a system where its usefulness is just a hook to get me to use it. It works the way I want to, and the company running the servers (DreamHost) doesn’t care one fig what I do.
My blog’s older than Twitter and Facebook, and it will outlive them. It has seen Flickr explode and then fade. It’s seen Google Wave and Google Reader come and go, and it’ll still be here as Google Plus fades. When Medium and Tumblr are gone, my blog will be here.
The things that will last on the internet are not owned. Plain old websites, blogs, RSS, irc, email.
I knew if I waited around long enough, blogging would be the hot new thing again: Sippey, Steele, Spiers.
I have been blogging consistently here at Newley.com since January, 2002.
Streaks are important.
2 replies on “Personal Blogging: Everything Old is New Again”
Hi Newley —
I’d love for blogs to be back in fashion. I personally have been a fan of blogging since the 2006 — not as long as you but like you, I’ve been regularly blogging all the time that I’ve had my blog.
And for what it’s worth, I do consider blogging a kind of social media — I’ve made friends through it, including a few that I’ve ended up meeting up with in “meatspace”. At the same time, it doesn’t feel as pushy as Facebook (which I’m still a hold out against), and provides more context for my photos than Instagram and more room for my thoughts than Twitter.
Absolutely, YSTL! Have been enjoying your blog as well all these years. Keep up the good work 🙂