Kottke makes the important point that the demise of GoogleReader and decline of RSS was really the turning point in the popularity of blogs. I often wonder how things might have been (better?), if there had been a more accessible independent group of writers over the last 5 years.

I feel like Twitter, Facebook, and to a lesser extent Instagram etc would have been forced to be better by some competition as well. OTOH I have saved months of my life not reading them...