A recent blogggingheads episode pointed me to this piece, Shakesville’s unravelling and the not-so-golden age of blogging. I know Melissa McEwan mostly due to her being hired and fired by the John Edwards campaign in 2007 (word of warning: don’t hire bloggers unless you have “checked them out”).

I won’t comment on McEwan’s blog because I haven’t read it much (really, at all). But the thesis of the piece seems to be that the way the author characterizes the blog can somehow reflect and illuminate the general tenor of the golden age of blogs. She also argues that the things we hate about social media were already there in blogs. There is nothing new under the sun.

Obviously there is something to the argument. People are people. The medium is not “controlling” us. Some blogs became quite cult-like. But what about something like Andrew Gelman’s blog? Can you really compare it to the rants you saw elsewhere?

The production of authors on blogs, like on social media, was always quite diverse. But the difference is that on social media it’s all packaged and bundled together. Sometimes you want to indulge yourself with a cupcake. Sometimes you want to dine on a fine steak. And then there are the instances when you want a simple and elegant salad. On your Twitter timeline, it all blends together into a fine gruel. There’s no disaggregation. You get the sweet frosting with the steak, as well as the tang of arugula paste.

Quantity has a quality all its own. That’s what Twitter teaches us.

The people, whoever they are, at ScienceBlogs have announced that they’ll be shutting down at the end of the month. I actually should have all my archives, so there’s no worry on that end for me.

The first few years for Seed were pretty flush for a small operation. There were a couple of blogger meet-ups in New York City (and a fair number of ad hoc meet-ups in the San Francisco Bay area, as several of us lived there and many people traveled there). But the Great Recession hit media hard, and that included Seed. Some attrition of bloggers started to occur in 2008 and 2010, and then presumably in an attempt to get more revenue they started a Pepsi sponsored blog, and that caused a further set of defections.

But there are some great blogs still there. Respectful Insolence and Uncertain Principles I’ve followed on and off since the beginning. The latter blog has had some continuity as a science blog since the spring of 2003, so along with Gene Expression it’s been around for 15 years or so.

Here is an article in The New York Times from January 20th of 2006, Science Blogs as a Vehicle for Upscale Ads. I remember where I was then, chilling out in Prospect Heights at my friend’s apartment in New York City. Honestly, a nearly 12-year run is not that bad. Some great journalists started at or grew their careers at ScienceBlogs.

ScienceBlogs’ wiping away of the whole site illustrates the major problem with relying on someone else’s platform to gain scale and synergy. It might be a short-term strategy. Unfortunately, I think the areas of science twitter I’m familiar with are already in steep decline from the vibrant and spirited by collegial conversations dominant between 2010-2015. It’s not quite as far gone as ScienceBlogs’ neglect.