I feel like most of the complaints that make people think blogging is dead is because it's hard to "build an audience", but I've never really understood why that matters. I have had a blog more or less non-stop since 2001, and never once was "building an audience" a goal. My blog is written for my own self, as a place that records discoveries, knowledge, and thoughts so I can read them again later, shared so that they might be useful to others and as a way to connect with friends and family who already know about my blog directly. I actually get plenty of organic traffic from search engines, simply because a lot of my writings over the years are notes on troubleshooting technical issues or instructions for how to set up a self-hosted service, things I wrote so I could find them again later without any audience other than myself considered, but still high value due to their detail.
Why do we need an "audience"? Many of the most honest and interesting contemporaneous writing in human history was written as private memoirs or journals, and blogging originated out of journaling. There's never been a need for an audience to derive value from writing, and that hasn't changed, we've just accepted the bargain social media has tempted us with to "make us famous" off of feeding their user-generated content machine. Being famous was never the goal of starting a blog, and it shouldn't surprise anyone that many many people continue to blog without any desire to be made famous.
Why do we need an "audience"? Many of the most honest and interesting contemporaneous writing in human history was written as private memoirs or journals, and blogging originated out of journaling. There's never been a need for an audience to derive value from writing, and that hasn't changed, we've just accepted the bargain social media has tempted us with to "make us famous" off of feeding their user-generated content machine. Being famous was never the goal of starting a blog, and it shouldn't surprise anyone that many many people continue to blog without any desire to be made famous.