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Webring - Another One Bites The Dust

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the geocities-then-yahoo-then-obscurity dept.

imrdkl writes: "Salon is running an feature about the history of the WebRing since Yahoo! bought it last September. The article goes on to give an outlook on Yahoo! itself, including how WebRing has recently been sold to one of the original developers. Webring seemed to me to be a really nice neighborly concept, but it seems at least some of the ringmasters reckon it should die now."

6 of 90 comments (clear)

  1. Often Overlooked, Perhaps, But... by ekrout · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I like Google's "Similar Pages" utility that allows users to find pages with relatively similar content to ones that they already find informative, useful, etc.

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    If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
  2. Re:Good concept, unpractical in real life... by Servo5678 · · Score: 3, Interesting
    The problem I had with webrings was that website owners were less likely to join and existing ring and would instead make their own ring to compete with an existing one.

    For example, say I make a webring for Handspring Visors. It's dedicated to websites about Visors, Visor software, Visor mainteance - everything Visor. Now other Visor sites wouldn't join up - the owners of the other sites would create competing webrings, and before you know it there'd be a webring for Visor Hardware, one for Visor games, one for Visor hotsync tips, one for Visor hacking, etc.

    How many webrings do we need for the same topic?

  3. Re:Webrings have been good for linux by swimfastom · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I disagree. I haven't used webrings for a couple years, but when I did, I found them to be almost useless. Half of the time I would get a 404 Page not found error. It only made me frustrated and I just started using search engines to find related linux pages. Some websites would even become a part of a webring for the sole purpose of increasing traffic to their site! I remember hitting "next site" on the linux webring, and finding something completely unrelated.

    Off the topic of linux webrings, there exists quite a few sites that are designed to let anyone create and manage webrings. An example is Ring Surf. The site claims they have over 20,000 rings. Other sites that offer many tools for webmasters, such as Bravenet offer ring setup as well.

    As for me, I never joined the cult of webrings because I found them to be useless and didn't want to waste the space on my pages. I'm surprised webrings lasted as long as they did.

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    http://tomgould.com/
  4. Re:My Webring migrated and it works fine. by hearingaid · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I've actually gotten two requests for signups to my (low-traffic) ring since the switch back from Yahoo!

    I'm glad it's out of Yahoo! actually. the ring code fascists were irritating. why can't we have custom fragments?

    --

    my old sig used to be funny, but then slashcode ate it and now it's not funny anymore

  5. Re:Webring "communities"? by ImaLamer · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Webrings are very nice ways to form 'communities'.

    Some sort of competition sometimes springs up when you see the other sites on the ring - but it's all friendly.

    If you were looking for something like 'Bryce Pics' and galleries, a web ring is nice because you search once, and hit next when you are done with that page. You don't have to go back and search through google again.

    Why does everyone think they suck so much? Maybe I need to start a 'Save the webring' webring?

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    Get your Unix fortune now!
  6. My Webring Days by dystopianO · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I created my first webring, The Absinthe, in July '97 with my then girlfriend in hopes of making an area to link our friends gothy sites together. It grew from two simple personal sites into a ring of more than 150 sites. By this time I was dealing with the ring all on my own (A difficult task with the amount of submissions I was getting), so I enlisted two friends to help. Starseed had purchased webring by this time and I was becoming more discriminating with what type of site I would let into my ring. Goth rings were a dime a dozen, I wanted mine to standout and shine with the best that the gothy portion of the net had to offer. With Starseed came changes to the webring management functions to increase ease of use. These changes made administering a webring more difficult, timeouts were frequent and after a timeout you had to wait 20-30 minutes to log back in making ring management tedious. With the arrival of the Yahoo/Geocities deal, I really feared for my ring and those others I was a part of. I wasn't worried about ads or popups, I was concerned about the perversion of the communities that we ringmasters had created. Without the ring masters holding the system together, creating rings with Next5 and List/Index pages to display ads on(And who here is an old ringmaster that remembers the option to turn off ads on your pages? Ahh the good old days.), webring wouldn't have flourished. So with the advent of a new "improved" UI, to enhance ease of use, the Webring died as far as I'm concerned. It didn't die because it was simply difficult to admin a ring, it died because it was no longer fun. Fun was the reason I'd created a ring and the only reason I worked to create a better ring for myself and all those who were members. Also the trend was dying faster than the Swing dance/music craze. Everyone had a webring, so they made X of the Y sites, then they made cliches, now they all have E/N sites.

    Maybe one day I'll use Ringlink to revive The Absinthe, but only when I feel that it may be fun once again, it's certainly past the 'so last year' phase and hardly anyone has a decent ring anymore.