101–110 of 162 posts
Tags for instance are a classic example of something people raved about, thought would work than were a total failure.
It was found filenames actually gave more useful information to the user than tags.
(PS if it's not obvious hashtags are not tags)
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I think I did mention that in the piece, but I deliberately keep the Facebook comments even on articles where I'm critical of Facebook to show that I'm not some extremist zealot. I'm just a normal person who happens to love the web.
It does guarantee that people like me can't comment on your pages, though, which would not be true if you had a normal self-hosted comment system.
Facebook is web's McDonalds.
The new AOL.
I think this is an example of seeing the past through rose-coloured glasses. Yes there was Flickr but you could discover photos. Thing is, Flickr is still there and you can still use it . What's clear from this is that Flickr didn't (and doesn't) cover what is the use case for most people: sharing photos with a limited group of friends and family. Technorati? Honestly, I think this is an example of living inside a ve…
sharing photos with a limited group of friends and family This can't be understated. As a highly technical person running my own web services, even I rarely posted photos. The support burden of managing the server, securing it, and keeping family up-to-date on passwords was just never worth it. Facebook wants to own all your data. It wants to be your identity. I would love to hear ideas for ways we can fix this that…
Peer-to-peer social with discovery. A system where companies/people/groups could self-host their own server, companies could host for others, but all the systems could talk to one another. Data gets stored where you want it to - on your own system or on another (though it's portable even there, by design).
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WordPress is actually a good example. There's the self-hosted software distributed at WordPress.org, which works in the Web 2000 fashion (here's some software, figure the rest out yourself). And there's the hosted service at WordPress.com, which works in the walled-garden fashion (though with liberal allowances for things like getting at your data, which is nice). Lots of people run their own WordPress installations,…
You made me think, "If only there were a host where you could install the software with one click, and it would automatically update itself..." Follow that thread far enough and the line between a blogging service and a hosting service begins to blur. The real objective, I think, isn't to get everyone hosting their own stuff, but to popularize technologies that both allow data portability (you can move to another ser…
I think this is an example of seeing the past through rose-coloured glasses. Yes there was Flickr but you could discover photos. Thing is, Flickr is still there and you can still use it . What's clear from this is that Flickr didn't (and doesn't) cover what is the use case for most people: sharing photos with a limited group of friends and family. Technorati? Honestly, I think this is an example of living inside a ve…
In Technorati's defense, it's what allowed lots of savvy people to target the top 100 blogs and enjoy the network effect from doing that. A good example is Tim Ferriss' book, The 4 Hour Work Week. It was useful for figuring out which blogs one ought to be commenting on in order to create synergy with one's blog.
We are on the same onramp now as we were in the late 90’s. Facebook, Twitter, et. al. are just another stopping point to whatever comes next. We lost some things along the way, we abandoned some of our anonymity, and in some ways our freedom and experience suffered. But we have also gained tremendously in the decade since. We have smartphones with apps that guide us to cool places and discovery new experiences. We have apps that make our shopping experiences easier and cheaper. We have apps that let us express ourselves in sounds, pictures, videos, text, and to share those expressions of ourselves to the world in a few clicks. We can find any number of experts and sites that offer assistance without flipping open phonebooks or blindly Googling the world.
Yes, we lost something. I also agree that we have forgotten some of the earlier values that made the web such a joy. We got enticed by free apps and gaudy user experiences. However, there will be a backlash someday and the next generation of Internet users will jump outside of these walled gardens to take control of their own online identity.
Just a few reasons today's Web trumps anything from the 'Technorati' (seriously?) era: Open API's that reply in JSON, Cloud VPS's at $0.02 per hour, 10 Gb ethernet, 54 Mb fiber in my house, multicore computers in everyones pocket, GPS at everyones fingertips, web frameworks like Sinatra (yes, it took more than three lines of code and two bash commands to publish 'Hello World!' to the web back then), caching solutions…
I can't just be a citizen on the web. I have to be an entrepreneur in order to matter.
I want the wide-eyed hippies back in charge rather than the Ayn Rand freaks.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
sharing photos with a limited group of friends and family This can't be understated. As a highly technical person running my own web services, even I rarely posted photos. The support burden of managing the server, securing it, and keeping family up-to-date on passwords was just never worth it. Facebook wants to own all your data. It wants to be your identity. I would love to hear ideas for ways we can fix this that…
'I would love to hear ideas for ways we can fix this that are realistic' Peer-to-peer social with discovery. A system where companies/people/groups could self-host their own server, companies could host for others, but all the systems could talk to one another. Data gets stored where you want it to - on your own system or on another (though it's portable even there, by design).