Where Have All the Websites Gone?
fromjason.xyz
Where Have All the Websites Gone?
1–10 of 407 posts
Re: Where Have All the Websites Gone?
#2[dead]
Re: Where Have All the Websites Gone?
#3I think that as the author notes, we have gone. And I think it’s because we grew up. We don’t have the spare time like we used to, which, inevitably means we don’t access same sites, depriving them of visitors and relevant revenue.
We’ve gone.
Re: Where Have All the Websites Gone?
#4Website is great if you want to publish a document. Collect information in one place. Most of the daily stuff is just human communication better served by forums, tweets, images, news, e-mails, chats, tik toks etc. These natively work better in apps or app like sites where the information comes and goes gets lost or never even gets discovered. If we worry about the information siloing up we should build communication web thats not owned by big corps. It’s like the open source side stopped building the protocol after web 1.0 was finished and left all the emergent use cases for start ups to solve.
Re: Where Have All the Websites Gone?
#5Not only has the content become fairly centralized, many of the sites that you might go to find things like...recipes, or guides, or direction on something...are absolutely littered with ads. It is no trivial task to scroll through these metaphorical garbage cans looking for that one tidbit of information that will help you, mobile especially. And to some degree, I get it. The incentives that got is to today are all pointed towards an ad based world, so part of me just laments the feeling of seeing more of these kinds of blogs.
/rant
Re: Where Have All the Websites Gone?
#6I think that as the author notes, we have gone. And I think it’s because we grew up. We don’t have the spare time like we used to, which, inevitably means we don’t access same sites, depriving them of visitors and relevant revenue. We’ve gone.
We’ve gone, but replacement never came. They got stuck on twitter, discord, tiktok, twitch, snapchat.
Websites are difficult to build for the average Joe. Having a personal website doesn’t seem to be cool anymore. The number of followers on platform xyz seems to be the thing today. Lets hope the trend dies out and personal websites become cool again.
Re: Where Have All the Websites Gone?
#7I have been feeling this quite acutely for several years now, but it does seem like it’s been accelerating. In my head I’ve been blaming LLMs—appification was already driving content into silos, but the locks came out quickly this past year as the silos realized they were giving away very valuable data for free. I guess the sad part for me is that the internet mostly feels like a waste of time at this point—everything is designed and optimized to maximize “engagement” (ie monopolizing your attention) and that’s not well-aligned with being _useful_. Cookie banners, paywalls, spam—everywhere. Mobile sites are practically unusable—half page banner ad at the top, video ad auto playing underneath it, ad network drawer sliding up from the bottom, interstitial ads in the content itself, a popup over the page asking you to sign up for an account, a chat bot in the corner, and a “continue reading” fold mid page. It’s just…not fun anymore.
Re: Where Have All the Websites Gone?
#8I think that as the author notes, we have gone. And I think it’s because we grew up. We don’t have the spare time like we used to, which, inevitably means we don’t access same sites, depriving them of visitors and relevant revenue. We’ve gone.
I just don't think the idea that we don't have spare time is true. People prove that they have time to spend ample amounts of time on the big social apps. The truth is that it is much easier to check out and scroll mindlessly for an hour or two, versus finding meaningful creations on the web.
Re: Where Have All the Websites Gone?
#9Obviously an imperfect analogy - but the article reminded me of an older acquaintance, describing how the world he lived in became so shriveled and monotonous, as he descended into alcoholism.
Re: Where Have All the Websites Gone?
#10Apps themselves have undergone a similar transformation. It's OK to have an app for everything but instead today we sort of have a more common format: "login and we let you download the For You page in what looks like an app".
For some reason, websites are also trying to be apps, instead of being websites and it feels like both are a side effect of of what the OP describes as the need for the few to maximise revenue on their content.