I’ve stood by WordPress for the longest time but that doesn’t mean I don’t keep tabs on the new shiny things. I’ve mentioned Svbtle, Jux, and Medium—before it adapted a more typographic design. Ghost, said to be the next WP contender (I heard that about Anchor before) is the most buzzy one these days now that it’s finally launched to the general public.
But the list is a lot longer and I’ve done a compilation on Devlounge, all of which I’d like to try out but lack the time & content to. Even a day after that I bump into a new one for the photographers, Exposure—which makes me just shake my head in dismay at the massive opportunity Facebook is missing to let people tell their stories in a more beautiful, expansive way. Instagram is nice, but it’s for the now, not the nostalgia (except on Throwback Thursday and Senti Sabado?).
Most of these are hosted as opposed to self-hosted and have varying value propositions. Hi, for example, has a lovely format of photo + place + words. I also like the prospect of database-less, file-based systems, including ones that tap into the power of the much-loved Dropbox and Evernote.
These new platforms tell me that blogging is most certainly not dead. It seems to be undergoing some kind of renaissance, led by top-notch news, magazines, and technology blogs revamping their designs to become more accommodating to the reader instead of the advertisers;
Led by an article bookmarking revolution in Instapaper, Pocket, Readability to unbundle the content that matters drowned by the extraneous gunk on websites;
Led by the “design thinking” philosophy taking over the startup scene that proclaims: the interface matters, the experience matters.
