A short chat last week sparked a familiar question:

 

“Is blog even the right word anymore? Do people still use them? Isn’t the whole thing outdated?”

Yes. Yes. And no.

You’d be forgiven for thinking blogs died off, especially if your online life happens on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Instagram - like most of the world. Even mainstream media barely mentions them. And yet, nearly every news outlet runs a blog. They just don’t like to call them that. More on that in a moment.

For now, if you’re reading this, you’re either on a blog or using a feed reader. So yes blogs are here and relevant - because you wouldn’t be reading this if it was irrelevant. Would you?

Some quick history.

The oldest continuously running blog is 🔗 Links.net, started by Justin Hall in 1994. It’s still live, though ‘regular posting’ is clearly not its hallmark. One post this year, nothing since last February. But still: there.

A more famous long-hauler? 🔗 Scripting News, from 🔗 Dave Winer, the guy behind RSS and podcasting. He also started in 1994. Justin might’ve gotten there first, but Dave’s still publishing like clockwork. Double-digit post counts, most days. No contest on stamina.

But this isn’t about nostalgia. It’s not a leaderboard. It’s about blogs:

Are blogs still here?

I did a rough count this morning: about 600 million blogs exist globally.

Yes, newsletters too. Every Substack is a blog in disguise. The ‘email’ you get is just a post, sent to your inbox. Substack simply stopped calling them blogs. That doesn’t make them something else. (Same for Medium, Ghost, Micro.Blog) - the idea of a newsletter is a push to an email address (or app) - a blog (through its RSS feed) is also a push - just not to your email - but to your app of choice and there are many to choose from;

MetNewsWire, Feedly, Reeder and Readwise to name just fiur that I use (it’s a sickness - it doesn’t have to be this way. One is fine.)

So yes, blogs are very here. Many are quiet, some unread, but together, they form the internet’s chaotic chorus. And now and then, you catch something brilliant.

So what’s the problem?

Discoverability. Let me show you.

The New Zealand Herald, one of our local papers. 🔗Here’s their ‘blog’ page, but don’t try finding an RSS feed for it. It isn’t there - BUT - they do keep RSS feeds tucked away over here:

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/technology/nz-herald-news-rss-feeds/SOA2EBUD5L72DYXMP3A267XOKI/

… ten different feeds, but none for the blog. Helpful. NOT. (And it’s been there since at least 2017.)

Worse, click one of those RSS links and you’ll see … code. Which looks like gibberish unless you know what you’re looking at.

But if you’ve got a feed reader, it’s gold. You copy the link, paste it into your app, and boom—custom news stream, no algorithm required.

The screen shot below is from ‘Reeder’. I’ve got all ten Herald feeds in one tidy folder. Local news, technology, business, whatever. It’s fast, focused, and completely under my control.

So why bother? Why not just visit the Herald’s site?

Because one feed reader can hold hundreds of sources. I don’t browse around - I bring the good stuff to me. It’s the difference between wandering through multiple stores and supermarkets - with car rides between - and still not finding things, definitely missing them and getting frustrated versus receiving a curated box delivered daily to your door step AND you are the one doing the curation (no algorithms) AND you can discover other curated feeds that you can also follow.

Of course, the Herald is a business. They pay journalists. They want ad clicks and subscriber logins. Fair enough. But their reluctance to promote RSS (or blogs more generally) feels less like innovation, more like a gate.

Are blogs still relevant?

If they’re not, then:

Meanwhile, if blogs are irrelevant, then:

That’s the supposed trade. But it’s not a fair one. Relevance isn’t binary. It depends on context—and trust.

Why do people think blogs are dead?

Because tech giants and media companies want them to be - because both want you to stay on their sites - that is how they make money. BUT, you can make money without lock in. But that is a different topic.

If you read everything on LinkedIn or Facebook, you stay on LinkedIn or Facebook. That’s the whole game: lock-in. Get you scrolling, keep you scrolling, make it feel like you never need to leave. Blogs don’t play that game. They sit outside the walls.

And that makes them dangerous - in the best way.

This is part one of a very long post - trying to decide if I should publish the rest?. What do you think.