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Welcome to the new web.

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Re: Welcome to the new web.

#91
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope you don't mind a shameless plug, but I believe something like my startup might be this new platform of which you speak: http://loggur.com . I'm not claiming that my startup in particular will be it, but something like it. Just saying this probably puts me in the category of "just another young whipper snapper who aspires to be the next Zuck"... but I have no desire to do anything like Facebook or Google or int…

The concept of loggur seems interesting, but to be completely honest, I thought the "help us get featured on" written in small characters before the logos of TechCrunch, Mashable, etc. was deceiving in a really lame way.

I've seen other startups on HN do the same thing and received positive responses for doing so, which is why I did it. It seems to be a matter of perspective, I guess. As per your response, I'll make the "Help us get featured on" text larger. My intention isn't to be deceiving or lame. I just hope to someday be able to remove that text.

Re: Welcome to the new web.

#92
As I write this there are two comments that have been downvoted to the bottom for expressing how difficult the post is to read. They draw attention to the post's textual interface, albeit perhaps sarcastically ("Is the new web better at UX than this? That was painful to look at.").

Not only is theirs a serious concern, but it speaks to the main issue of the post, for it reminds us that like web interfaces, even text has accreted arbitrary rules to interpret it. Take the apostrophe for example, it is for most purposes superflous as one can tell from context whether a word is plural, possessive or a contraction. Well, I can tell the difference, cant you?

The original post is saturated with consistent, but by no means universal and certainly not empirically-derived, pre-conceived rules for communicating textual content: the date posted is in italics; the site name is bracketed and bold; the post name is bold; links which serve a sorting function are colored, underlined and bracketed; a presumably copied email prefaces the actual post in italics with each line itself prefaced with a less-than-sign; and most importantly much of the post is composed of incomplete sentences ("A web where...").

We allow ourselves to bend the rules of grammar. And as we bend them, we adapt to the new general rule.

We are all familiar with the english teacher's common correction of a misplaced object: "It's 'He and I went to the store', not 'Me and him went to the store'". This "rule" has been so often repeated, that most days I hear college-educated individuals perform the inverse, substituting the nominative for the objective case, as in "Bob critiqued the web page with Jack and I." What is interesting to me is apparently the act of replacing the nominative with the objective also occured in the Latin language around 200 AD (and it's a common act in children). So, if we create our rules for grammar empirically and not not arbitrarily, we can look at saying "Me and Jack did something" as acceptable because it has a natural precedent.

Which is all just to say that communication as a web form or in paragraphs is subjective and organic. Differences in type should be no more surprising than differences in human ethnicity.

Re: Welcome to the new web.

#93
post #6

I'm a member of a forum for graduates of one of the schools I went to. In 2007 it was a vibrant and active forum, growing steadily, and straining its hosting account, which constantly had to be expanded. At some point, around 2009, most of the members of this forum got Facebook accounts. That forum is now completely dead. Facebook took all the oxygen out of the site, and it seems like a lot of other sites. Now very m…

Facebook is doing the same thing to your forum that your forum did to USENET.

In the 90s, USENET was lively and active. It was federated, decentralized, and you could use any client you wanted to access the information. Web based forums came along and shifted that control away from the loose internet and into the owners of the forums.

Re: Welcome to the new web.

#94
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also weird IMHO when you see an advert or movie trailer, and they tell you to visit their facebook page, rather than their own website...

It is just a repetition of the "Use AOL Keyword "ID4" (for Independence Day). Walled gardens for the less technical savvy have been the norm. Outside of the hacker/coder/geek culture, has it ever really been different? Prodigy -> AOL -> MySpace -> Facebook

I agree, over the years we've seen this type of thing again and again. I tried to explain to my mom once about the concept of a browser and that the IE icon on her desktop was not the Internet. After a while I gave up after realizing she was perfectly happy with her misconceptions about what the Internet is.

It's only a matter of time when something else will replace Facebook as "the Internet". These things work in cycles.

Re: Welcome to the new web.

#95
post #79

It's ironic that ten years ago many people (average consumers) thought that AOL was the Internet. Now they think Facebook and Google are. Ten years from now, it'll be something else and HN type people will still be doing their own thing as usual.

Is our thing complaining about the popular things from the lesser travelled discussion forums? Snickering about how the masses don't know Facebook from the web from the Internet. "The fools!"

That's obviously tongue in cheek but there's some truth to it. At the end of the day does it really matter if people are happy using the one thing on their computer that they can actually use and understand?

Re: Welcome to the new web.

#97
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an administrator of an online message board, I concur. Web content is being so efficiently aggregated that some forums turn into the awkward conversation between two redditors: "Check this out!" "Heh, yeah. I saw that." Communities before were usually separated by platforms , because the platforms were not yet sophisticated enough to support vast communities of varying opinions. Now we have a few big players that…

I hope you don't mind a shameless plug, but I believe something like my startup might be this new platform of which you speak: http://loggur.com . I'm not claiming that my startup in particular will be it, but something like it. Just saying this probably puts me in the category of "just another young whipper snapper who aspires to be the next Zuck"... but I have no desire to do anything like Facebook or Google or int…

Heads-up: that site won't let me answer "no" to "Do you want the mobile version?"

Re: Welcome to the new web.

#98
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going put put my two cents in, and say that a platform capable of replacing Facebook for discussion and community on the web has already been created. It's called Reddit. Bear with me here, I realize this is probably an unpopular opinion. On Reddit, all content is open -- I don't think I've ever seen a 'closed' sub-reddit available only to members. I'm not sure it's even possible. Yet, in spite of all communities…

There is a closed subreddit available to members who have purchased Reddit Gold: /r/lounge.

(If you haven't seen it, that subreddit is just "look how rich I am" silliness.)

Re: Welcome to the new web.

#99
post #41

Google tried it the other way via Google Wave and unfortunately nobody bought into it.

Jesus, downvotes for mentioning Google Wave.

I was specifically responding to this part: >A web where re-sharing of content is limited by the platform, not by the capabilities of your client. A web where you cannot comment on an article unless registering in a corporate namespace (which kicked you out if you happened to choose a name they do not particularly like).

The point was that Google tried it open, it didn't work. Facebook is closed, they tried that. Is it working?

Re: Welcome to the new web.

#100
post #97
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope you don't mind a shameless plug, but I believe something like my startup might be this new platform of which you speak: http://loggur.com . I'm not claiming that my startup in particular will be it, but something like it. Just saying this probably puts me in the category of "just another young whipper snapper who aspires to be the next Zuck"... but I have no desire to do anything like Facebook or Google or int…

Heads-up: that site won't let me answer "no" to "Do you want the mobile version?"

Ah thank you very much for pointing that out! It must have broken when I switched from Apache to Nginx+Memcached. It's fixed now.
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