LinSight Shuts Down

There's been much rumbling, but it looks official: LinSight and LinDeveloper (the sites operated by Dave Whitiger and Atipa have shut down. They decided that it wasn't an efficient use of resources... on the positive side, LinEvents (a Linux Events calendar which was the most useful part of the site) will continue. No word on what Dave's gonna do now, but somehow I don't think he'll return to LinuxToday ;)

Comments

Too many Linux sites anyway

[Anonymous Coward]

Who has time to read Slashdot, LWN, LinuxToday, kuro5hin, advogato (even if it sucks), rootprompt, Linux.com, Joe Sixpack's 31337 Linux h4x0r z0n3, etc. ?

Why doesn't Andover buy the rest of them anyway? I want all my information from a media conglomerate damnit!

Re:Too many Linux sites anyway

[carlos_benj]

"Who has time to read Slashdot, LWN, LinuxToday, kuro5hin, advogato (even if it sucks), rootprompt, Linux.com, Joe Sixpack's 31337 Linux h4x0r z0n3, etc. ?"

You're supposed to READ Slashdot?? I thought you were only supposed to glance at headlines and then wade in with an opinion. Except on this topic - posted 20 minutes ahead of the Napster story and only 16 comments vs. over 100.

We could beef that up by tweaking......

Napster not a factor in shutdown of LinSight

Posted by JonKatz

carlos

Re:Inevitable, and not necessarily bad

[Carnage4Life]

Then again if this keeps up the Net will eventually mirror the real world with it's homogenized Walmarts, Starbucks' and Barnes & Nobles' being frequented by the many while independents close up shop and die. Only a short while ago everyone espoused the beauty of the Net and how everyone could be their own publisher but with the death of websites daily (linsight.com, reel.com, toysmart.com, boo.com, drkoop.com, peabody.com, and soon cdnow.com) are we not headed for a Net that is controlled by the few.

For instance VA Linux via Andover already controls Freshmeat, slashdot, and a bunch of other frequently visited open source sites and is estimated to draw 50 percent of open source/linux traffic on the Net. I'm not sure if I should be celebrating the fact that one more voice from the other 50 percent is gone.

PS: This post is not trying to bash VA Linux but instead is mentioning the fact that already in the real world almost everything is in the hands of a few corporate entities (the same company that sells Marlboro cigarettes sells Post Cereal and Kraft foods, Disney owns ABC television and Miramax films, AOL owns CNN and Time)and the Net was supposed to be haven away from that where opposing views and opinions were only a mouse click away. I am not sure we should be celebrating the death of that...

This bothers me.

[emmett]

I used to work at LinuxToday, as a matter of fact I was recommended to the job by Dave himself. Dave is a really fantastic guy with a lot of really fantastic ideas, and I'm really sorry that LinSight wasn't the success he was hoping for. There's one thing I will say, though. Don't count out Dave Whitinger. Dave is a fast-moving, intelligent entrepreneur, and I'm sure he'll surprise us again with something cool. I was actually the first person Dave told about LinSight, and I still think it's a good idea. Who knows what else is in his brain?

--Emmett

Syndication

[KMSelf]

Weblogs are a cool concept, but ultimately lead to fragmentation -- content, eyeballs, authors, and participants are spread among many distinct islands.

One of the more interesting ideas to emerge from the Advogato / Kuro5hin axis is the concept of syndication. This would cover content, already common -- Slashdot and LinuxToday are essentially content syndication sites, and The Register officially sanctions linking. But syndication could also include a distributed user directory, and potentially (flame on) attributes such as karma or other metrics of merit from various sites.

I see a mix of several models coallescing into the final "product":

• From Slashdot and Blockstackers -- Everything -- a hyperlinked, persistant, discussion/directory. Somewhat like Wiki.
• From Kuro5hin, a well-de signed collaborative moderating system
• From Advogato, the idea of a trust metric is useful, but not sufficient.
• From the IWETHEY EZBoard, active content promotion. Active topics float up in the discussion queue. It's a bit different from a typical weblog, but tends to promote issues of interest and bury (but not kill) those which aren't generating much traffic.
• From LinuxWorld, multiple forum interfaces -- forums can be web, Usenet, or e-mail based.

Still to be worked out are issues of story selection. Various models work -- Slashdot and IWETHEY fall at two extremes, with a dedicated editorial staff on the one hand, and a number of free-form "open forums" in which any topic may be posted and discussed. Kuro5hin's still working out the kinks, though a number of suggestions have been proposed.

The point is that high-quality (and low quality) content are created all over the Net. Mindless Link Propogation (TM) (MLP) is a useful way of aggregating it to key sites. Mindful link propogation might be even better.

What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?
Scope out Kuro5hin