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Where Have All the Websites Gone?

fromjason.xyz

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Re: Where Have All the Websites Gone?

#281

Post by fiddlerwoaroof »

darreninthenet wrote: post #273
nonethewiser wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or Stumbleupon clone's aren't popular because there really just isnt a lot of demand for them. Stumbleupon clones already exist. People generally prefer social media and in this case I'd say Reddit more specifically. Here is one I found with a 5 second search: https://cloudhiker.net/ It works great. It's fun. Hopefully people will enjoy it. But I dont think we need to make excuses for why its not more popular.

Looks great, makes a really great statement on its front page and then offers their extension for your browser... the link goes straight to the Chrome store, no other browser gets the extension support it seems

One issue is a lot more sites today have headers that block displaying the site in a frame. This prevents sites like StumbleUpon from displaying their UI at the same time as the content; the only way around it that I’m aware of is a browser extension.

Re: Where Have All the Websites Gone?

#282

Post by simonw »

mtillman wrote: post #227
simonw wrote: post #190

I want more people to have link blogs. I have one in the sidebar of https://simonwillison.net/ which I've been running since November 2003. You can search through all 6,836 links here: https://simonwillison.net/search/?type=blogmark I can post things to it with a bookmarklet. It has an Atom feed. It's such a low-friction way of publishing. A lot of https://daringfireball.net works like this too. I also like https://w…

have you seen https://ooh.directory ?

Hadn't looked since it launched, wow it's looking very healthy! Here's my listing there https://ooh.directory/blog/96nwv6/

Re: Where Have All the Websites Gone?

#283

Post by jassyr »

simonw wrote: post #190

I want more people to have link blogs. I have one in the sidebar of https://simonwillison.net/ which I've been running since November 2003. You can search through all 6,836 links here: https://simonwillison.net/search/?type=blogmark I can post things to it with a bookmarklet. It has an Atom feed. It's such a low-friction way of publishing. A lot of https://daringfireball.net works like this too. I also like https://w…

I enjoyed the blog. Where do you find the time to post though, once you're done with work or do you schedule specific time to post?

Re: Where Have All the Websites Gone?

#284

Post by ShamelessC »

fiddlerwoaroof wrote: post #281
darreninthenet wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks great, makes a really great statement on its front page and then offers their extension for your browser... the link goes straight to the Chrome store, no other browser gets the extension support it seems

One issue is a lot more sites today have headers that block displaying the site in a frame. This prevents sites like StumbleUpon from displaying their UI at the same time as the content; the only way around it that I’m aware of is a browser extension.

How is that related to other browsers not getting an extension?

Re: Where Have All the Websites Gone?

#285

Post by tech_ken »

One dynamic that I think contributes to the disappearance of websites, but which has maybe a more positive shine than some other explanations, is the increasing usage of internet technologies to support small social group interaction. Consider the hypothetical Jan 1 scenario described by the author: the 2024 equivalent is seeing a screenshot of a Tweet that reminds you of a friend, and then posting it in your groupchat. This type of close/closed-circle communication didn't really exist back in the 2000-2012 era. Sure chat rooms existed and were popular, but they had a very different flavor from the current social forms of a group chat or a discord server. I think this turn towards the "cozy-net" in the last 5-8 years (a term I'm fuzzily borrowing from Venkatesh Rao) means that people are less interested in finding weird niche blogs or internet 'locations', hence their decline. The internet is now less like cave-diving or archaeology, and more like a house party. The space is familiar and comfortable, in part because of the "For You" feed, but also because the point is to share the space with people you're close to. Certainly Instagram profiles have replaced personal blogs, which isn't great, but also Instagram messaging has (partly) replaced comment sections which TBH is probably better for many people's experiences. Anonymous forums can, for all their fun and novelty, be hostile and sad places when you get down to it.

Re: Where Have All the Websites Gone?

#286

Post by nonameiguess »

kridsdale1 wrote: post #200
Swizec wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet I listened to a podcast once where a tax accountant explained that Instagram Search is her strongest lead pipeline. At my dayjob we do women’s health, actual clinics with real doctors. Many of our users come from Instagram and TikTok ads. Because yes people will in fact choose their doctor based on a good Instagram/TikTok presence. In fact any time I mention the brand to female friends who live in our target…

Backing this up. Google is presently most feeling threatened by TikTok, not OpenAI. Because an entire generation of new American adults does not use web browsers, like much at all. Want a burger? You probably open Chrome, go to Google or Kagi and type “Burger $myCity” People under 25 use TikTok and Instagram and just look for “burger” and are blasted by 300 10s videos of real people munching and smiling. Like a perfe…

I'm curious to what extent this is honest to God actually true. Maybe the very first time I ever move to a new city and want a burger, my first thought is find some directory service telling me where burgers can be found. Right now, I have a kitchen and a grill and would make the burger myself as a first choice, and if not, I've lived in the same house for seven years now and have a great dive bar a block away I can walk to that my wife and I have hung out at forever where we know the owner and staff and they make terrific burgers, better than anywhere I've been in the city in the now nine years I've lived in this city.

Do people really just perpetually not know where to get something they want in the place they live?

Re: Where Have All the Websites Gone?

#287

Post by acegopher »

zozbot234 wrote: post #104
miramba wrote: post #11

I believe that there are still a lot of interesting, non-commercial websites out there. I just can‘t find them anymore. SEO dominates literally every search I try. I also tried Bing, DuckDuckGo, you.com and many more - same result. I think a search engine that excludes every website with google analytics, ad networks and amazon affiliate links would be great. Anyone know of such a thing?

https://wilby.me/ does that. But back in the day all the "interesting, non-commercial websites" would be listed in a curated web directory arranged by subject, and we're still missing that. There is an emerging practice of niche subject-specific "awesome-lists" but these are no substitute.

Are you sure that's the correct URL? That site is a near-default Wordpress site with a single Hello World post from 2018.

Re: Where Have All the Websites Gone?

#288

Post by gexla »

People just don't think of the world in terms of finding their people. Work? Find people doing cool things. Internet? Find people writing about or doing cool things. Friends? Find cool people to hang out with. Dating? Find cool people to... (none of my business.)

Instead, it's all about job applications, swiping right, scrolling the algos, etc. Nobody thinks in terms of people.

My list isn't even websites. It's people, and whatever ways I can follow or contact them.

Re: Where Have All the Websites Gone?

#289

Post by bloppe »

Once upon a time, people installed applications. You installed skype. You installed AIM. You installed iTunes. You installed Microsoft Office.

Now, you go to zoom.com, or messenger.com, or open.spotify.com, or docs.google.com. You don't have to install and constantly update desktop apps because you can load an always-up-to-date webpage in 500 milliseconds. PWAs have access to desktop notifications, serial ports, your local filesystem, etc. They can do everything desktop apps can. With WASM, they can even handle high-performance workloads. The web is just a better way to distribute software.

IMO, operating systems should go all-in on web apps. ChromeOS basically does that. The capyloon project [1] aims to do that for mobile devices. There should be no downloadable apps. "App stores" should just be CDNs. Browser caching can enable offline use. There's no technical reason why the web can't be just as user-friendly as downloadable apps. It's just culture.

And, hopefully making the web more usable would also soften the power of the platform silos.

[1]: https://capyloon.org/

Re: Where Have All the Websites Gone?

#290

Post by hutzlibu »

bheadmaster wrote: post #211
cloverich wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think communities attract types of folks unless they become uber popular (like reddit) to the point they can attract everyone. 4chan was interesting when I found it, but I quickly found it became mostly toilet humor at its best, and was often (i.e. every time I opened it) full of racism and sexism. It was a safe place for immature folks to shout whatever they wanted and not care who it affected -- though of course…

> It was a safe place for immature folks to shout whatever they wanted and not care who it affected It is sad that the popularity of internet has reached such proportions that people are no longer responsible for what they read by their own choice , but rather people seem to be responsible for what they write , regardless of the fact that anyone can choose not to read it. Internet posts are just text, yet people act…

"Internet posts are just text, yet people act as if we're forcing others to read what we write. Imagine if writing books that make other people feel bad was banned - what a culture would that be."

Between death threats and insults directed at real people - and a fictionary book, there is usually a difference, even though books can be bad as well, if they are directed against certain people (e.g. Mein Kampf).

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