A turning point for a blog, AI self-soothing, and the death of a mascot

Too short for a blog post, too fun to ignore, here are a few thoughts about the world of marketing, content, and beyond …

The end of comments

This might seem counterintuitive for a person who preaches about “the most human company wins,” but I have disabled comments on this blog. It has nothing to do with trolls or haters-it’s the math.

In 2017, I wrote a post noting that the average number of comments on a blog post had dropped from about 25 to 12. This decline was happening as the number of my subscribers was going UP. I theorized:

1. Comments have migrated from the blog to other places where I post, like LinkedIn and Medium. Many people also find it is just easier to reply to the email they receive.
2. When I started this blog in 2009, most people consumed content on a desktop or laptop computer. It was easier to leave comments on a keyboard. But today, about 85% of the traffic comes through mobile devices, and it’s just a pain to log in and comment.

So, while my subscriptions have gone up and I judge the quality of my content to be better than ever, the actual number of comments per post is near zero. It’s not a failure. It’s evolution.