Resurrect the Old Web • Hacker News Board

Re: Resurrect the Old Web

#41

Post by corytheboyd » Thu, Sep 25, 2025, 2:07 PM UTC

> In my opinion the answer is honestly pretty simple: blogs and RSS feeds.

This point is made very often, and I do believe it was true for many people, but I honestly didn’t care about individual blogs at all when I was a young net user.

I didn’t care about the 1,000 words a single person wrote about their trip abroad. There was no way to interact with it? All the action for me was on forums and chat rooms. Like the author mentions, it’s exactly the type of excitement that naturally led to early social media, which I was also a huge fan of for the close friends I already had.

The defeatist in me feels like I will just never have that same feeling again online. In part because I am no longer a child, in part because there are just too many people online now, in part because too many of those people’s brains are twitter-rotted.

It’s fine, I have my close circles to keep my human social spirit alive.

Re: Resurrect the Old Web

#42

Post by NetOpWibby » Thu, Sep 25, 2025, 2:08 PM UTC

HermanMartinus wrote: post #31

wiether wrote: post #3

I don't get HN's appeal for the bearblog platform? If anything else, if one wants to resurrect the "Old Web", one shouldn't do it on someone else's platform. Parts of the "Old Web" disappeared when the platforms hosting it stopped. The brutal shutting down of Typepad should be another reminder of this reality: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/08/one-time-wordpress-c...

Creator of Bear here. Suggesting that because one project fails, others will too is a bit of a fallacy. Fact is that whether you self-host or not, you're still using someone else's platform (unless you're a real self-hoster with a box in your closet, in which case, good on you and godspeed). I think as long as platforms have an easy way for people to backup and migrate, that's fair. Additionally, part of the appeal o…

I don’t use Bear but bless you for building it the way you are. Not everyone has development skills to do it themselves so it’s up to us coders and programmers to build these tools.

Re: Resurrect the Old Web

#43

Post by corytheboyd » Thu, Sep 25, 2025, 2:09 PM UTC

onion2k wrote: post #4

No ads I don't know what "Old Web" the author is remembering but when I was first paid to make a website in 1997, it had banner ads on it.

CONGRATULATIONS, YOU WON!

Re: Resurrect the Old Web

#44

Post by alisonatwork » Thu, Sep 25, 2025, 2:09 PM UTC

krapp wrote: post #34

reactordev wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They all wish they had the viewership for ads. They definitely were a thing all the way back to the first browsers. Banners, side banners, buttons, applets, most web advertising size standards are derivative of these initial placements. What you’re talking about was geocities or aol’s members sites that anyone could build a site with. Anyone running CGI wishes for that sweet ad revenue to pay for the Sun servers…

Geocities, Angelfire, Tripod and the like all had banner ads. I think you could pay not to have them but for free accounts they were mandatory.

That wasn't the case in the beginning, on Geocities at least. It was a pretty big deal when they started introducing popups and mandatory banner ads.

Re: Resurrect the Old Web

#45

Post by jwr » Thu, Sep 25, 2025, 2:10 PM UTC

I am all for resurrecting the Old Web, but please, let's not repeat the same mistakes again.

Be independent. Running your own website is not that difficult. And seriously, spending the minuscule amount of money on hosting should not be a problem. It's a hobby, hobbies cost money. If you own your website, you can move it anywhere quickly. Nobody will start showing ads. Nobody will pester your users with annoying "SUBSCRIBE" modal popups. Nobody will sell the platform along with you and your content to a new owner.

I do not know enough about this particular platform — maybe it's different from others, maybe not. But I have seen enough platforms undergo progressive enshittification to be wary of any place that wants to host my stuff under their domain/URL.

Re: Resurrect the Old Web

#46

Post by NetOpWibby » Thu, Sep 25, 2025, 2:14 PM UTC

corytheboyd wrote: post #41

> In my opinion the answer is honestly pretty simple: blogs and RSS feeds. This point is made very often, and I do believe it was true for many people, but I honestly didn’t care about individual blogs at all when I was a young net user. I didn’t care about the 1,000 words a single person wrote about their trip abroad. There was no way to interact with it? All the action for me was on forums and chat rooms. Like the…

> I honestly didn’t care about individual blogs at all when I was a young net user.

Wow. This was me too. I was excited to hop on the Rockman.EXE Online forums and tell people about my homepage I was constantly redesigning/rebuilding.

> The defeatist in me feels like I will just never have that same feeling again online.

I feel you, but I’m still chasing that. Close circles are where it’s at though, maybe we gotta be happy with that. SIGH

Re: Resurrect the Old Web

#47

Post by CIPHERSTONE » Thu, Sep 25, 2025, 2:14 PM UTC

onion2k wrote: post #4

No ads I don't know what "Old Web" the author is remembering but when I was first paid to make a website in 1997, it had banner ads on it.

"No ads" is possible. It's a choice really. Too many bloggers also want to make money and think ads are the way to do it. That's certainly their right, but it doesn't have to be that way.

Want no ads, start browsing gopher sites. No ads there. Or find people making blogs just because they want to. They exist. Github + Jekyll is a great option for free static blogging if your willing to spend a little time getting it setup and learning something new.

Re: Resurrect the Old Web

#48

Post by ryanolsonx » Thu, Sep 25, 2025, 2:15 PM UTC

It’s funny, when I was younger, it was all about MSN messenger, MySpace (esp the music player on there), and forums. That’s the old web I remember from before. No personal blogs, really. (Again I’m not old enough to remember before that)

Re: Resurrect the Old Web

#49

Post by crgk » Thu, Sep 25, 2025, 2:15 PM UTC

kshahkshah wrote: post #33

I think we need a new protocol, a hard break

Then you may be interested in Gemini (or Gopher, or…) https://geminiquickst.art/

Re: Resurrect the Old Web

#50

Post by talkingtab » Thu, Sep 25, 2025, 2:16 PM UTC

I do not think "old" helps a discussion and probably impedes it. A better conversation is perhaps about what features we call "old" are good and desirable. Then how we can build a new, sustainable system with those features.

Unfortunately sustainable is somewhat equivalent to money. Whatever work you do, and even if you love it, in general it needs to have a functional business model. Businesses that can financially support the people who provide them, tend to continue.

Personally, I believe this is the fundamental problem with many of the things that we now fondly think of as "old". Google groups? What was the business model? Did it make money? How could you make money from doing something like that?

The fundamental business model IRL used to be "fee for service". Not lock in. Not subscription. It works, because if people want the service they can pay for it. Okay, so hint: what are the issues of implementing fee-for-service on the internet?

hint number 2: someone mentioned banner ads in a comment. Is that fee for service? If not, for extra credit, what would be the side effects of a banner ad type business model? Are there useful services that could be provided with an alternative business model. Etc.