Speaker
Greg Swan
Session
The State of Blogging in 2025: The Blog Is Dead, Long Live the Blog
Two decades ago we hand-coded blogrolls and hunted for that sweet orange RSS icon. Then feeds died, social platforms swallowed distribution, and algorithms turned us all into reluctant growth hackers. Yet here we are in 2025—witnessing a renaissance of personal weblogging erupt across Substack, Bluesky, and a fresh crop of indie CMSs. What happened? In this fast-moving session, Greg Swan traces the messy history of blogging, dissects its outsized impact on culture, and spotlights why AI-powered workflows and email (email?!) are both gasoline and accelerant. Most importantly, we’ll talk about keeping the human weirdness of blogging intact. Because sameness is the new spam, and the appeal of content + community will never die, no matter the medium.
About Greg
Greg Swan Senior Partner, FINN Partners. Greg started personal blogging in the days of LiveJournal, Blogger, and Typepad. From there, he built community using blogs, serving as an editor at the Minneapolis Metroblog and as founder of the AllTop.com-accredited music blog Perfect Porridge (which had an excellent 10 year run until Steve Perry from Journey killed it – true story). At work, Greg helped big organizations and companies like the US Army, Snickers, Chevy, and Verizon build blogs to directly connect with their audiences. Today, Greg runs a Substack called Social Signals that reaches thousands of subscribers each week, and works as Senior Partners at Finn Partners, leveraging everything he has learned about content, community, and platforms to help craft integrated strategies for brands of all sizes—from startups to Fortune 500s. Oh, and ask him about his fax machine. Seriously.