A web 2.0 far
I suddenly realised something yesterday: the Internet ran out of new and clever things two years ago. After that it just started inventing stuff that I don't want or need.
You're now thinking "ah, getting old, fighting progress, neo-luddism" and arching your eyebrows in that manner that I hate, and keep meaning to tell you isn't your most attractive feature.
No, you're wrong. I'm perfectly able to keep abreast of new stuff. It's just the new stuff that's appearing is pointless. I'm just a bit worried that no-one else can see this.
Some examples.
Example 1: "MySpace"
Why does MySpace exist?? It's awful! It' owned by bloody Rupert Murdoch! It's slow, confusing, badly designed, and seems to be populated by utter morons.
You're now going to snort (I hate the way you snort, too, BTW) and say "yes, but, Becky, it's great for bands to reach their audience, and not everyone has the skills to design their own websites".
Yes, but 99% of the people I know aren't in bands, and the ones that are only have a MySpace page because they felt they couldn't afford not to. As far as I know, there are only a handful of bands that have made it big via MySpace, and most of the time they seem to have been backed by some huge A&R department before they ever set foot on the site.
And as for "not having the skills to design their own websites", why not? MySpace is populated mainly by kids. Kids should be learning HTML in Grade 1 by now, surely? They should be watching jaunty Schools Programmes featuring Derek Griffiths singing
"I'm an ', come and take a look at me!"
They shouldn't need a dumbed-down advert-heavy monstrosity like MySpace!
Example 2: "Twitter"
I don't want to know what my friends are doing every bloody second of the day. And I don't want them to know what I'm doing all the time. If I did want to know what they were up to, I'd ask them. Not log on to some website to discover that they thought "just had a really satisfying poo" was worthy of sharing with the world.
What happened to the good old-fashioned process of writing an email to share your news? Twitter is destroying the art of conversation, and I refuse to have anything to do with it.
Example 3: "Joost"
Have you seen the crappy shows they've got on that thing? Well, probably not, it's not open to the general public yet. But you can still go to their website and metaphorically gawp through the TV shop window at the gaudy displays within.
A selection: Fight Network "Mixed martial arts programming", Braindead - "Crazy chicks, stupid people, fast cars, car crashes, dumb stunts and even dumber humour" and Off the Fence - "Docs on demand - sharks to stuntmen! Pandas to prisons!"
In short, utter, utter sub Men-and-Motors crap. I wouldn't take a beta key if they paid me.
. . .
I'm this far from setting up a walled compound, filling it with servers that emulate the Internet as it was in 2004, disconnecting it from the outside world and going and living there. Do I have any followers who fancy joining me?
You're now thinking "ah, getting old, fighting progress, neo-luddism" and arching your eyebrows in that manner that I hate, and keep meaning to tell you isn't your most attractive feature.
No, you're wrong. I'm perfectly able to keep abreast of new stuff. It's just the new stuff that's appearing is pointless. I'm just a bit worried that no-one else can see this.
Some examples.
Example 1: "MySpace"
Why does MySpace exist?? It's awful! It' owned by bloody Rupert Murdoch! It's slow, confusing, badly designed, and seems to be populated by utter morons.
You're now going to snort (I hate the way you snort, too, BTW) and say "yes, but, Becky, it's great for bands to reach their audience, and not everyone has the skills to design their own websites".
Yes, but 99% of the people I know aren't in bands, and the ones that are only have a MySpace page because they felt they couldn't afford not to. As far as I know, there are only a handful of bands that have made it big via MySpace, and most of the time they seem to have been backed by some huge A&R department before they ever set foot on the site.
And as for "not having the skills to design their own websites", why not? MySpace is populated mainly by kids. Kids should be learning HTML in Grade 1 by now, surely? They should be watching jaunty Schools Programmes featuring Derek Griffiths singing
"I'm an ', come and take a look at me!"
They shouldn't need a dumbed-down advert-heavy monstrosity like MySpace!
Example 2: "Twitter"
I don't want to know what my friends are doing every bloody second of the day. And I don't want them to know what I'm doing all the time. If I did want to know what they were up to, I'd ask them. Not log on to some website to discover that they thought "just had a really satisfying poo" was worthy of sharing with the world.
What happened to the good old-fashioned process of writing an email to share your news? Twitter is destroying the art of conversation, and I refuse to have anything to do with it.
Example 3: "Joost"
Have you seen the crappy shows they've got on that thing? Well, probably not, it's not open to the general public yet. But you can still go to their website and metaphorically gawp through the TV shop window at the gaudy displays within.
A selection: Fight Network "Mixed martial arts programming", Braindead - "Crazy chicks, stupid people, fast cars, car crashes, dumb stunts and even dumber humour" and Off the Fence - "Docs on demand - sharks to stuntmen! Pandas to prisons!"
In short, utter, utter sub Men-and-Motors crap. I wouldn't take a beta key if they paid me.
. . .
I'm this far from setting up a walled compound, filling it with servers that emulate the Internet as it was in 2004, disconnecting it from the outside world and going and living there. Do I have any followers who fancy joining me?
Ned Ludd
...anyway, the internet will drift the same way as TV went in the last few years. All bulk & few fresh ideas . There will allways be new ways of communicating information comming along that the net will be ideal for, but you can only do so many things with media that will hold the interest of the public in general before it all gets a little stale.
Facebook is another one of these social sites, which, again, I don't get. They seem very much like Geocities but without the bandwidth cap and more plug-ins.
I thought the fun of having a web page is that, should you wish, you can tinker with the code and produce some nifty features to enhance the content.
As to HTML, the kids seem to be being taught 'Office' - at least if my neice's education is indicative of most schools. Nothing like perpetuating the monopoly eh?
twitter? diggg? oh fuckoff.
though i really hated youtube at first but now a few friends are using it to showcase their video, i think it's one of the few useful web2.blah sites. (still, it's full of adolescent crap)
myspace? it should be banned for crimes against html
I've always enjoyed writing. Choosing the right word to convey MY feeling to a friend was a way of valuing and respecting the person I wrote to. It didn't need to be more efficient; it already was the most direct method. And it gave me a chance to connect my mind and my heart.
But Lynn...I think Facebook is more of an age thing. It's mostly students in high school and university who are on it. It's more private in that only people from your school can see unless you link other people. It's also a good way to mass-invite people in your network to events. It's actually pretty useful if you've got a specific network of people you're trying to reach. Most of your friends on Facebook will be people you actually know, compared to MySpace (that scum of the earth).
MySpace is utter crap. You're right. I have and continue to refuse to get one. It's like the bastard child of Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, and iTunes; doing some of what these do, but not as much of it and none of it well.
Twitter interested me for about a minute the other week when Siobhan brought it up until I started seeing "Great crap I just had" and such.
That other one I don't even know about but it sounds bad.
Facebook on the other hand as Tiff has so kindly pointed out is only as useful as your network on the site. At a university where you are in real life contact with your facebook friends for the most part it's great. For adults in the real world, I can see how it's not too helpful.
Thats the whole point, they don't have to make it big, they can have an audience spread across the globe listening to their obscure flavour of industrial german dub-reggae. The sales of the bands who do make it big are dwindling, because we don't all fit into a neat little demographic. Myspace is technically shit, the reason it's so popular now is simply that it hit a critical mass and started a chain reaction of artists go there because the fans go there because the artists are there...
Twitter: "Not log on to some website to discover that they thought "just had a really satisfying poo" was worthy of sharing with the world." You don't have to go on the website, you can get that on sms, or in IM, or on your dashboard. You don't have to read it, it's just there trickling past. You can have an awareness of peoples lives and feel a bit closer to them even if you don't really know them or only met them once, or perhaps used to be closer but don't hear from them much now and certainly don't have a reason to write a whole email.
joost, i've not really looked at that.
Anyway, the web is changing the world much more than most people know, whole industries or collapsing around us. Spending on online advertising passed newspaper ads last year, and googles ad revenue just in the uk passed channel 4s!
But in defence of MySpace...
It's been a good and valueable resource for my own website. We've had new viewers because people are coming via our MySpace page. It's not as brilliant as it's cracked up to be but it's the cyberspace equivalent of taking an advert out in Private Eye or putting your card up in the local shop window.
All the other stuff you've mentioned is totally crap...and I'd add Second Life into that as well. Just a reason to get people sucked into Pyramid selling schemes but with pretty graphicky type things to make it seem "fun".
But I can't shake the nagging feeling of dot.com, later to be called (as you know), dot.gone. That is, the sites are being pedaled as the next-big-thing, and will shortly collapse in a round of accusations and so on. And in the meantime, fads will ensure that some of these apps go away, some will become trends and some will become the "new" way of doing things. (Who'd have put money on blogger, for instance?)
There's no rhyme or reason to popularity, though. So expect to see more inanity, and maybe a few gems.
The department head at an insurance company I was at for a while said "who could have predicted the dot. com collapse?" I made myself popular by simply asking: Can you spell "tulip"? It's the same thing with Web 2.0.
(Of course, my forthcoming contribution, shameless plug, apologies, etc, will be different. I'm not charging, for one thing!) :-)
The world might be changing (so to speak), but people don't. Look for the next great success where no one else is looking.
Personally, I don't think Web 2.0 is actually here, yet.
Carolyn Ann
PS Good question! I feel the need to write about it! :-)
Is that supposed to be a good thing?
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