"This is a response to Marco Arment, Ben Thompson, and other pundits (largely spurred by the PR efforts of Google and to a lesser extent Facebook and Microsoft)"
It may not be self-congratulation, but this sentence is definitely unsubstantiated slander.
To be clear, I was not at all trying to suggest that tech was the only factor. It's a small one.
Moreover, where tech matters is in how it has devalued what the party offered, clearing the space for Trump (i.e. the effect of aggregation of the media is to neuter the party, not necessarily to elevate trump)
Turns out actually meeting a market need is important (Path), having a functional business model (Square), knowing your target customer (Dropbox), and we'll see with Medium.
User experience is a differentiator. It's not the only thing.
That was my only point. Sullivan type 40 post a day blogs don't make much sense anymore, but the entire premise of my article is that blogs still matter and can still be a business.
I think you either 1) didn't read the whole article or 2) completely misread it. The point is the meat remains, even as all the excerpt and link stuff has mostly moved to Twitter.