I hear you, my man. I've been blogging for nearly 28 years, starting on my university server long long ago, doing it all by hand in an era before CMSes, but quickly switching to Wordpress as soon as it grew stable enough. I still have a wordpress blog which I post to at least weekly. There still is a vibrant community out there, but it is much much less than it was, having been eroded by the sites you mention. I blog here more often, but I do still love that old Wordpress community. Anyway, it is really nice how Hive still embraces that blogging culture, complete with the focus on commenting and interacting with each other, made so much easier by the ease of linking to other people with the @ shortcut.