This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill - the story ends, you stay angry, manipulated and being sold to the system of algorithms that feed on your every move. You take the red pill - you read great content, unfiltered by algorithms and connect to the things you care about.
Will you be THE ONE?
During the month of December, any user that plugs into their Old Reader account will be eligible to win a $25 gift card to AMC Theatres to see The Matrix Resurrections. “Whoa!” We’ll be doing 10 random drawings throughout the month. Winners will be notified through the email address associated with their account.
Wired had a great post about the “slow web” or Artisanal Internet.
The idea is to embrace independent, decentralized technology, the way the slow food movement embraces locally produced, traditionally-prepared foods. It’s an interesting idea but I’m guessing not one most people are ready to embrace. Heck, I wasn’t even sure it would be 100% my jam.
My biggest concern is that in this analogy, Facebook is McDonald’s, and, like McDonald’s, is probably never going away. Both are unhealthy and addictive, and very hard for most people to quit. I’ve been off Facebook for about 5 years now and left Instagram maybe 2 years ago (although I didn’t shut down my account). But most of my friends still use both of those platforms. (And I do mean my real friends —
I have no idea what the randos I barely knew in high school are up to now that I’ve left.)
Big Internet keeps coming up with new ways to hook us. My kids have started to use Snapchat and one of them got backdoor-trapped into the social network known as Fortnite. Policing these really does seem a lot like policing my kids’ diet. We’ve taken the moderation and education approach for the most part and it seems to be working. But then I suppose they’ll just have their whole lives to battle how much they use social applications —
like we’ve all had to manage how much Ben and Jerry’s is acceptable.
The good news is that there are plenty of artisanal web apps out there. I like think The Old Reader is one. That is, apps that help you learn, connect, or get things done without spying on you or manipulating what you see for their profit. But start calling them Artisanal Web Apps at your own risk… I have a feeling you might get slapped in the face if too many people hear you talking like that.
Just like farmer’s markets haven’t wiped out fast food, the slow web is probably never going to take down Facebook or displace Google. The issue is that there is no alternative to an advertising-driven business model that really works. But if developers can learn to live without venture capitalists, without trying to grow exponentially, and offer a safer, less polluted Internet, we can get along just fine.
Jim Nelson signing out after 15 years as chief editor at GQ:
We hear a lot about the Future of Media, about the inconvenient truth of
disruption and the promise of this or that way forward. Sometimes I
think no one knows anything. And then I realize the answer is as obvious
as it ever was. See, throughout my years here, there was always
something that was going to come along and revolutionize everything—the
iPad, Vine, Facebook Live, IGTV—but to my mind, nothing ever replaced,
or will replace, what happens when smart and talented storytellers put
their hearts and minds together to create work they’re excited about.
That’s the only key to the past and future of media, and the only thing
worth aspiring to.
Halloween is the one holiday that’s best celebrated in the dark. Which is why The Old Reader is excited to be able to introduce the all-new Dark Mode. It’s time to embrace the dark side of reading on the web.
Okay, Dark Mode really has nothing to do with Halloween, but this seems like the perfect time to introduce it to everyone. It is all about readability, reducing eye strain, and making your experience using The Old Reader better.
Dark Mode was one of the most commonly requested features we’ve had from our users and there is even a user-created plugin that does a similar thing. With this new, built-in feature, all you have to do to use it is hit the “d” key while using The Old Reader, and voilà, you’re in Dark Mode.
Dark Mode is just one small way we want to keep The Old Reader moving forward. Give it a try, we think you’ll really like it. Thanks again for all the great feedback and happy darkmoding!
But he also hit on something bigger- the social media dumpster fire is not an accident or something that got out of control. What we have now is an intentional, man-made disaster. The fire was set on purpose and investors poured on the gasoline. As Maza says,
The problem with these social media sites isn’t that a few bad apples are ruining the fun. It’s that they’re designed to reward bad apples.
Even Sean Parker, the first president of Facebook says, “It’s a social-validation feedback loop … exactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with, because you’re exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology.”
Parker is probably giving himself too much credit as an evil genius, but it’s obvious that when Facebook exploded, he and his colleagues were more than happy to fuel the conflagration.
Breaking Up With Social Media
We certainly weren’t the first to warn people that its time to turn off social media.
If you watched HBO’s new documentary Swiped, the film made the case that the gamification of social apps is breaking human relations. It’s a terrifying a portrait of a generation addicted to social apps.
We all know social media is manipulating us. Let’s stop taking this stuff seriously. It’s not real. If something makes you angry, wait and read next-day’s take. Don’t react with a smiley face or frowny face. Think about stuff. Can you even remember what social media outrage fest was consuming all of your mental energy last week? Human nature can be nasty and ugly, but we don’t have to let the social media platforms profit from it.
It’s been just over five years since Google shut down the Google Reader. I was surprised to see a lot of people are still bitter with them about it, even though *ahem* independent alternatives continue to exist and thrive.
I get it though. I was one of the millions of people who got my news from Google Reader. But it was infuriating to watch them kill a useful tool and then invest billions in magic glasses, killer drones, and self-driving cars.
So while it’s okay to be bitter, I think most of us probably realize we’re all better off with them gone. RSS took a serious hit that day, and use remains down. But in many ways, RSS is in a healthier and more sustainable position.
It’s now clear that the demise of the Google Reader was first really loud warning that you can’t rely on a publicly traded, profit-driven Silicon Valley tech company to deliver content. There is no way that story ends well. They will feed you sponsored crap, undermine your democracy, or pull the rug out from under your feet entirely.
I’m not going to pretend life is necessarily easier with Google gone from the game. The problem is that the tech giants are successful because they make things so easy. I know that RSS may never have as many users as it once did when Google was invested in it.
But online publishing isn’t supposed to be easy. And being an informed citizen isn’t supposed to be easy, either. The idea that we just casually check our phone every hour or so and Google, Twitter, or Facebook would give us a quick dose of everything we need to read is a fantasy.
When Google got out of the RSS game, those of us who remained realized that yes, we can survive without them. Five years later, RSS is still the best, most unfiltered way to get content you want. There’s a greater diversity of choices and no one company dominates everything. So let’s stop hoping Facebook or Twitter or someone else will do our job for us. Let’s stop waiting for someone to tell us what we want to read. Let’s stop publishing what they want us to publish. We can do better without them.
I had about four hours of highway driving yesterday. Even though I probably could’ve navigated it on my own, I opted to use Apple Maps, which is integrated with my car’s Apple CarPlay “infotainment center.” It was nice. It told me how many miles I had remaining and my expected time of arrival. But it wasn’t a life changer.
With all that time to kill and not a lot to keep me occupied, I started thinking about how most new technologies marketed directly or indirectly as being life changing wind up changing our lives for the worse.
Email. Great on it’s own, but now that we all have 24-hour mobile access it means we’re expected to be available and responsive 24/7. At a minimum it’s a disruption with the potential to turn a nice relaxing Saturday afternoon into a stressful workday.
Texting. Nice way to keep in touch with friends, schedule meet ups, etc. But it comes with the pressure of always having to be responsive. I don’t know about you, but I feel guilty when I can’t respond to a text within 10-15 minutes.
Social Media. It was so fun to catch up with High School buddies… but turns out it’s making people mentally ill and ruining our democracy.
Streaming Video. What’s the biggest struggle parents have with technology?Limiting screen time. What’s the benefit? I don’t know… it keeps the kids quiet?But limiting screen time has been proven to be important for mental health and development. Kids play video games while watching YouTube videos of other kids playing video games. For real. This is a standard behavior.
I’m no Luddite. I believe internet and mobile technologies offer tremendous opportunities for positive life and world change. We need to consider when the nice-to-have features are actually worse for us. This is important work. The most features and newest technologies don’t need to win. We don’t need to hand over quality of life for nice-to-haves.
Being hyper-connected to people should serve PEOPLE’s best interests.
Being informed is only a benefit if the information is good.
So while that maps experience I had yesterday was nice, the only way I can envision it changing my life would be for the worse. The consequences of losing my privacy perhaps? I don’t know, I only know that trusting these mega technology corps has proven time and again to be bad for us. Life changing indeed.
Seth Godin has been one of the most influential people on the web for at least 20 years. In 1999, his book Permission Marketing redefined digital marketing. 17 books and 7,100-plus blog posts later, he remains one of the most thoughtful and interesting writers about how humans communicate and connect in the modern age. It’s especially impressive because he largely eschews social media and remains committed to blogging and book publishing. Though his blogging has gone from a superhuman five posts a day to a merely heroic once a day, he remains one of our favorite writers. We asked him about where inspiration comes from, how modern marketers have abused his ideas, and where the next Seth Godin might come from.
For your April Fool’s joke this year on your blog, you pretended that you were out of ideas. That’s obviously not going to happen any time soon, but seriously, where do you get your inspiration- whose writing gets you excited these days? Who do you read to get your creative wheels turning?
The joke was a terrible backfire. I fooled too many people, and I’ve thought a lot about why. I think it’s because folks think we need inspiration to be creative. I don’t believe that this is true. No one gets plumber’s block. They simply do plumbing. Creativity is work, it’s not the muse, or lightning or the result of burning incense. I write daily because I’m a professional, and this is what I do.
Okay, so this is obviously a leading, self-interested question, but where does RSS fit into your life? How do you compare the RSS model to the way social media works?
RSS is tragically overlooked. It’s an endaround to get past the giant companies that want to dominate your media life. It is snoop free, ad resistant and fast. It can’t be filtered or otherwise squeezed. RSS gave us podcasts, and it gave us a useful way to consume an endless series of blogs. I’m still angry at Google for building a trap that took the wind out of RSS’ sails. But Google has moved on, and the rest of us, if you care about information and freedom and access, you can go get an RSS reader.
How have you resisted the pull of Twitter and Facebook? Would you advise other people to take the same non-engagement approach to social media? Can the rest of us really live without social media?
If you use those services, at the very least, you’re the product. You’re being sold. And that’s okay, if you’re getting something out of them. What are you getting? Are you building an asset? Confronting useful fears? Making a difference for anyone? I spend zero time wondering if I should be spending time on social networks instead of doing my work.
You’ve said that even if nobody read your blog, you would still blog every day. What is the value to the pure act of blogging?
Every day, I have to stand for something. Notice something. Put it down for all to see. The act is clarifying. It requires me to be a bit less of a hypocrite. And on a good day, it’s generous. That’s a pretty great combination.
Has blogging been good for your mental health? Should more people do it, or are you somehow ideally suited to the medium?
Well, I have no control group… But I think given how much it helps others and how little it costs, it might be a great experiment. Do it for thirty days. If daily blogging doesn’t make your life better, I’ll give you a full refund on what you spent reading this!
It seems like an important moment for you was when you stopped worrying about your online reputation. Is that a precondition for people to be persistent in the face of failure in the contemporary world?
Worrying is the key word. I haven’t stopped building trust, haven’t stopped contributing, haven’t stopped trying to push the envelope. I simply stopped worry, measuring and checking. My work got better instantly. So did my life.
You use the word privilege a lot- in fact it’s in the definition of permission marketing. Is there a sense that online marketers have been overlooking the privilege part of the equation? That too many are trying to capture audiences and not earning the privilege?
Right! Humility is in short supply in the marketing world (did I mention I’m getting inducted into the Marketing Hall of Fame in May? I’m practicing being non-humble to get ready for it…)
The thing is, we’re truly privileged. Someone taught us how to read. We’re healthy. Many of us grew up with people who believed in us. We live in a house. We have a wire that connects us to 2 billion people. Etc. etc. If you steal someone’s attention just to make a buck, I fear you’ve wasted all that’s been given to you. If you lie or hustle or scam because you’ve got a story in your head that you deserve it… what a waste. Empathy and humility are at the heart of successful marketing. We ignore that our peril.
What’s happened to the concept of permission marketing? What is your take on current online revenue models for publishers and platforms? I remember feeling so excited about the idea of permission marketing but I have a creeping feeling that there are too many selfish marketers dictating the agenda.
Among brands and individuals that want to race to the bottom, it’s a footnote, easily ignored. They scam and hype and hustle. But among those that want to earn trust and make a difference, it remains the fundamental building block of connection.
How do more writers make a living? What is the most sensible business model to make web publishing sustainable? What practical advice would you give to a 20-something Seth Godin trying to make his name today?
To quote myself, “I’m still trying to be pretty good at being ‘this’ Seth Godin, so I wish people who want to be the next one a lot of luck. There’s never been a next Elvis Costello or a next Jill Sobule. There wasn’t even a next Chuck Berry or a next Charlie Chaplin … I think the most productive thing to do during times of change is to be your best self, not the best version of someone else.”
Can you make money writing articles or books? Not easily, not out on the long tail. The opportunity is to build yourself a niche, a place where you and you alone are the one to copy.
Do you ever get the entrepreneurial itch? Will we see you starting a new company again?
I learned a while ago that saying never is a good way to become a hypocrite.
This is a post that was drafted months ago but never published.
Seems appropriate now more than ever so we’re going to release it into
the world.
Something about this post title makes me think of some discount warehouse liquidator. “We’ve eliminated the middle man and passed on the savings to you!” But the truth is, that there are times when a middle man is nothing but destructive to a relationship and everybody gains by their removal.
Facebook is the ultimate middle man.
They tax the creators to reach their followers. Boost!
They only show content that leads to stronger performance with their advertisers.
Instagram is the same now. I know we all wish it wasn’t, but it is.
There are really only two parties that matter. The writer and the reader. A middle man always has dubious plans because they provide limited value. Particularly on the open web.
RSS had this right years ago. I realize, technically speaking, RSS platforms like ours are in the middle. The difference is that we’re replaceable. It’s not a private network and people come to us from other platforms all the time and vice versa. It’s healthy.
So why did we all leave to the private network and entrust the middle man? It’s because services like Facebook always start out as free and easy. They are just here to help connect you to your friends. For free. No ads even… isn’t this great?
Jason Kottke has been one of our favorite bloggers for a long time. He started blogging at kottke.org back in 1998, about a year before the word was even coined. He’s been a consistent and inspiring figure to us at The Old Reader and we were thrilled to talk to him about the state of Internet publishing, how he stays engaged and inspired, and the future of blogging.
When you wrote R.I.P. The Blog, 1997-2013, you were obviously engaging in a little hyperbole. What is the relevance of blogging today? How dead is it in 2018?
Yeah, just a little hyperbolic. Obviously many people still blog regularly, myself included, and new ones are coming online all the time. But the network has become smaller and less connected, I think. For better or worse, sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and the like offer easier and more powerful ways to share stories and information with friends and interested strangers. All the people using those platforms are performing bloggish acts…we just don’t think of them that way.
Has blogging been good for your mental health? Should more people do it, or are you somehow ideally suited to the medium?
Hmm. I can’t speak for anyone else, but often I don’t know what to think about something unless I write about it. And I love hypertext…linking to other sites and embedding images and video is still, more than 20 years on, such a powerful way to communicate ideas.
Whose writing gets you excited these days? How much reading do you do each day to find your topics?
I don’t know that I could name specific writers, but several video creators come to mind. Evan Puschak of the Nerdwriter produces these great videos about movies, music, art, and other cultural creations. The team at Vox does great video work, but I will drop everything to watch anything new by Joss Fong. I’m still bummed the Every Frame a Painting team stopped doing their thing. The Primitive Technology videos contain no dialogue, just a single man building huts, weaponry, baskets, and tools from scratch in the Australian wilderness.
How do most of your good sources come to you? What’s the best tool for cutting through the noise and finding what inspires you?
I use a lot of different things: Twitter, Facebook, newsletters, tips from readers. And RSS (see below). Twitter is often the most useful.
It seems safe to say that social media and the news feed algorithms have had some serious failings as a content curation tool. Does the world need more of the personal curation found in blogs?
I mentioned Twitter above. I use Tweetbot as my Twitter client, which has two essential features for me: 1) the feed is strictly chronological, and 2) there’s keywords filtering for the timeline & mentions. I use the filtering extensively…any mention of Trump or Pence or Bannon (and dozens of other terms) I just don’t see. If I want to keep up on that sort of thing, I can go directly to a preferred news source. Mostly I follow people that I know on Twitter who share and retweet interesting information, much like a linkblog.
How do more publishers survive? You and a few others seem to have made memberships work. What is the most sensible business model to make web publishing sustainable?
Membership is a good option for me, but I’m not sure about anyone else. Like, I really don’t know. The main thing that I’ve learned is that it’s good to diversify your revenue. Don’t just rely on one thing…you never know if it’ll suddenly dry up or something else will take off.
You’ve said that you stopped using RSS when Google Reader folded and lost touch with a lot of blogs. Obviously we’ve got an interest here, but what would get you interested in RSS again? Is there a role for it on the web?
I haven’t stopped, but at most I look at it once a month to catch up with the sites I follow that are still updating (not many). Honestly, Facebook, Twitter, and Google (in the form of AMP) have figured out easier and faster ways for people to find content and for publishers to connect with and monetize readers. As we’ve seen recently, there are many problems with those platforms but RSS and newsreaders still have to compete with them.
When blogging was born, people talked about disintermediation and how blogs would be death of traditional media. Now the new hype is around decentralization (outside the social networks), sort of blockchain for electronic publishing. Do you buy any of the new hype?
If the publishing and reading interfaces are as easy and fast or easier and faster to use than centralized services, people will use them. For most people, reducing that friction is the most important factor.
A lot of publishers put their faith in Facebook, but now the Facebook is suddenly taking news out of the newsfeed, they are scrambling for a new distribution model. How do publishers attract actual audiences without trusting their fate to social media distribution channels?
Well, I think you don’t rely on Facebook. You can use Facebook, but when Facebook sends you 40 million people a month for 3 months, don’t count on it in month four. Other companies don’t care about your business except in the aggregate. A company as aggressive as Facebook – move fast, break things! – is not going to make decisions with your publication in mind.
Now that you are 40-something with kids and a blog, how do you stay curious and inspired? Do you see the same spirit that drove you to blog in any younger online publishers?
The blog forces me to keep up to date on what’s going on in the world and in culture, so that helps. I don’t have the same energy or time that I did when I was younger, but I’m hopefully wiser and work smarter now, so it evens out, I think. And yeah, the youthful spirit is alive and well online, in places like YouTube, DIY, Instagram, and Soundcloud. Despite corporate influence and consolidation, the web remains a place where it’s easy to try things out, to discover culture, and find yourself.
