Here’s one for the sociologists, evolutionary biologists, economists, or (like me) the slightly drunk 30 somethings avoiding work on their master’s degree:
I’ve been a lurker / poster on the Dope since ‘03. I also follow a few other sites that each have distinctive “products”. Depending on whether I want to read about stupid people doing mean things to other stupid people (FARK), or to feel superior to celebrities with more money than I’ll ever have (Gallery of the Absurd), catch up on what the kids are rappin’ about (Milk and Cookies/YTMND) or embarrass myself with excessive posting on Tuesday night (Straight Dope), I know pretty much what to expect at each site – a set of “channels” if you will. My PC has replaced my TV.
I saw for the first time today a funny reference to another website in a SDMB thread: “off to FARK with you and don’t come back till we tell you”. It occurred to me: are we seeing the evolution / natural selection of the best humor, discussion and video sites? Will the next ten years see a narrowing of choice among humor / discussion / video sites as a few sites comes to dominate their niches? Is this a good thing?
I think people like the illusion of choice, but in the end most of us are so busy that we’re largely content to settle for a few information sources we’re familiar with and occasionally gripe about items we disagree with rather than invest time finding the perfect channel / website that “speaks to me”. I guess my basic question is – will the web become an extension of cable TV?
I have noticed that many sites that were extremely popular 10 years ago, such as Fucked Company and Portal of Evil, are quickly fading from the Internet’s collective consciousness. Fucked Company started to grind to a halt about a year ago, but Portal of Evil is still going strong - it’s just that it seems to get almost no buzz now. Its Google PageRank is only 5.
I run an urban planning-related Web site that, as of this month, is 13 years old. It gets far more traffic than ever, but it seems to have almost no buzz compared to a planning-related news site that went online six years ago. When I correspond with urbanism and architecture bloggers, many didn’t even know my site existed, even though it ranks at the top in Google searches for planning-related terms. When schools and planning organizations update their links page, they often remove the link to my site. Why? Many think that it was among the early pioneer sites that no longer exists; after all, how many Web sites that were around in 1994 are still active? The dot-com bust of the late 1990s/early 2000s was the online equivalent of a mass extinction event; I think people assume my site was also part of the carnage.
There seems to be this mindset that Web sites have a shelf life; that except for the big guns such as Google and Yahoo, Fortune 500 corporate sites, and newspaper sites, a Web site shouldn’t be more than five or six years old. Survival of the fittest, or just the belief that Web sites die after a certain time? Think about this: how much buzz does straightdope.com generate now compared to 2001?