Genre-binding naming conventions are exactly the problem.
"Blog" originally stood for "web log", and as such didn't put any constraints or expectations on the media format, length, or quality. At some point format-specific platforms came in, artificially fragmented self-publishing into "microblogging", "photoblogging", "videoblogging", and took it over.
Not everything has to be a well written article, but blogging relinquished "just thinking out loud" type of publishing to mobile-first social networking walled gardens, and it's a real shame and a loss.
Shift to mobile is a massive contributor. Many newcomers to the internet are mobile first, and either don't have permanent access to desktop computers at all, or just couldn't be bothered.
And I don't see many blogging platforms that take this audience seriously. Wordpress seems to be the only one that has a mobile app at all.
Right — and the WordPress app has taken years to get semi-decent. There was a third-party WP app that WordPress acquired/acqhired many years ago that was excellent (it was the only app that allowed me to access a very customized WP backend with custom fields and other configurations so I could edit work posts back in the day), but the best features were never brought over to the main WP app and WP has evolved now so those features wouldn’t even be useful.
Tumblr has a great mobile app — as I said in my initial post, it was actually on top of the mobile trend — but none of the other blogging platforms do. They assume a response web page will work and it won’t — or that you’ll be creating a new file and kicking of a CI/CD build pipeline for a static site — which still doesn’t help if you just want to write an update or post a photo from your phone.
Even easy web builders like Squarespace and Wix and the like have, frankly, subpar mobile options.
You can’t blame people for just deciding to use Facebook or Instagram.
"Blog" originally stood for "web log", and as such didn't put any constraints or expectations on the media format, length, or quality. At some point format-specific platforms came in, artificially fragmented self-publishing into "microblogging", "photoblogging", "videoblogging", and took it over.
Not everything has to be a well written article, but blogging relinquished "just thinking out loud" type of publishing to mobile-first social networking walled gardens, and it's a real shame and a loss.
Shift to mobile is a massive contributor. Many newcomers to the internet are mobile first, and either don't have permanent access to desktop computers at all, or just couldn't be bothered.
And I don't see many blogging platforms that take this audience seriously. Wordpress seems to be the only one that has a mobile app at all.