Blogging isn't dead but blog discovery basically is. Fifteen years ago (through about 2009, I would say -- about the time Facebook demonstrably took over MySpace), there were tons of services and startups built around blog discovery.<p>And even into the early 2010s, Tumblr was still a thriving community that paid host to many different different subcultures and demographics (whereas today, Tumblr is largely fandom).<p>But now? The spammers helped murder the pingback/trackback -- RSS is still alive but it is often hidden and isn't even always a default for various static site blogging engines -- not to mention the lengths web browsers go to to deny that RSS even exists -- and the art of finding quality like-minded blogs of any size, is incredibly difficult.<p>Google had a blog search part of its search engine but shut that down nearly a decade ago. (Frankly, the fact that Google keeps Blogger running is sort of amazing, although I would be shocked if more than one or two full time employees worked on it -- I have to assume all the maintenance is done by vendors and contractors.)<p>Moreover, we've moved our communications to silos that don't allow for easy syndication (you haven't been able to auto-publish your blog/website to Facebook for years, for instance) or to formats (video), that are reliant on major giants (YouTube, Twitch, and to a lesser but growing extent, TikTok) rather than a user's own platform -- and that require a much higher barrier to entry for creators than blogging ever did. Way more people consumed blog content than ever regularly made their own blog -- but now it's even greater.<p>But beyond the various platform silos and the move away from decentralized to closed social network behemoths, blogging also never properly embraced mobile. The act of blogging on mobile was too difficult for too long (Tumblr being the one exception), while Facebook and Twitter were quick to become mobile-first (and in Twitter's case, was originally designed for mobile).<p>Blogging isn't dead but the curation and discovery tools that made it really take off in the 2000s is.<p>As someone who owes their entire career to blogging, this makes me sad. But it is what it is.