But the fact that no true new “modern” challenger CMS has emerged in years, only platforms like Medium, and platformized-WordPress (http://Wordpress.com , WPengine which I use) suggests that the “CMS” era proper may be over. The backend has to be serverless now.
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This has implications. It means only the more social/civilized type of writer, willing to *start* on a shared private community/aggregator environment like Medium or http://Wordpress.com , will get into blogging. Wild West pioneer-settler era is over. The townies are moving in.
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If I were starting out today instead of 2007, I’d probably not pick Wordpress or Medium. I’d probably have given up on the idea of writing in public altogether and my life would have taken a more traditional engineering career path. I just don’t enjoy townie-mode writing.
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Not just speculation. Ribbonfarm circa 2007 was my second start online. My first was a community e-zine, pre-blogging, in 1998-2000. When that got too social/communitarian and too full of townies, I quit. And didn’t write online again for 7 years.
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Another data point: I was active on Quora for a couple of years, and quit right when it was shifting gears from pioneer/settler to townie. Basically, I have a writing-centric life *only* because Wordpress was at the right stage of evolution when I got the itch.
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It was indie enough for me (unlike typepad or blogger), within my technical ability (unlike the old pre-blogging ezine era with its janky cgi-bin Perl scripts or the new cloud era with its self-checkout complexity)
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What does this mean? Unless someone comes up with tools that allow *new* bloggers to *cheaply* and with *low skill* run highly indie operations rather than platform sharecropping, the blogging frontier has closed. I give this a 5% chance of happening.
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The technical+cost barrier to entry is just too high and the platform options just too cheap/convenient. Those who got into Wordpress early enough or can do a higher-cost start now, will enter an end-game phase.
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I’m starting a series exploring where we go from here, as writers with pioneer/settler inclinations who don’t like large platform communities.https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2019/01/31/elderblog-sutra-1/ …
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