Slashdot Mirror
Web Surfing Losing Its Luster
asv108 writes "The New York Times has an article about how trolling the web is not nearly as much fun as it used to be. Reasons for the decline cited in the article include: commercialization, lack of compelling content, instant messaging, P2P, and the fact that it's been mainstream for a couple of years now. The average online session decreased from 90 (March 2000) to 83 minutes in March of 2001."
It'll be interesting to see where the Net fits in relative to TV and movies
for pure entertainment.
Time to put ads everywhere! The growth of the web is limited only buy your imagination! Make big bucks now!!!
how trolling the web is not nearly as much fun as it used to be.
:-P
No, I think the "page widening posts" have been the reason there aren't any good trolling around here, as described in this journal entry... Now that its finally fixed, maybe we'll see an increased amount of activity on the net.
Oh wait, I dunna think ita means what youa think ita means (Princess Bride quote, for you lame-o moderators)
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
i thought the net was about disemination (sp) of information, not really entertainment. the entertaining aspects can be accomplished elsewhere (online games, downloading music, etc).
:)
i REALLY hope my online session times start to decrease, productivity needs to increase
Reasons for the decline cited in the article include: commercialization, lack of compelling content, instant messaging, P2P...
Big Fucking Ads...
The New York Times has an article about how trolling the web is not nearly as much fun as it used to be. ;)
It seems that there are still plenty of trolls on Slashdot who still think it's as fun as ever.
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Random, useless fact: I type in startx entirely with my left hand.
I'm sure I've shaved off 7 minutes of online time by just having a faster connection...
for the past month or so theres been nothing to do as far as surfing the net for me, i goto slashdot.org dcemulation.com boob.co.uk consolevision.com and then i've checked all the newssites i normally ready. so what else is there to do? i personally goto video games like ultima online for the remainder of my time on the computer, either that or start coding. but as far as websurfing itself i get about 20 minutes of "entertainment" out of it and then im bored.
mmm... yeah... You see, we're putting the cover sheets on all TPS reports now before they go out...
My session closer to usually 24*60 = 1440 min. Unless speakeasy drops the connection.
-- &&
As if to prove its point, the article brought up one of those big pop-under ads. That earns the article an immediate right click->'Back' in my book.
:wq
Except Fark. I've given up on other websites and rely on Fark for everything.
Free Mac Mini. Yes, I'm
In case you don't want to register.
Yahoo link
I forget...are we at war with Eurasia or East Asia?
In some ways I am glad. It's nice to see the people who should not be here going back to whatever they did before, or whatever new sparkly thing that they have their eyes on now.
Maybe eventually the web well go back to the techies who originally created. Sure it will be smaller, sure it will be less pretty... but who's to say one can't find zen in a command line?
The Generation
I'd say something witty here, but I'm not that bright.
Why even bother posting this story? It's clearly one of those "slow news day, look for something off-beat to say" kind of stories that has no content whatsover.
One guy is bored with the web. Guess what, radio has been around for decades and it's still going strong.
Is the NYT so trend setting that if they post a content-free article, everyone else has to post a content-free article, too?
If broadband is becoming more common, and higher average speeds are available, wouldnt that decrease the amount of time spent waiting for pages to load, in turn decreasing the amount of time spent?
I know it takes me considerably less time to find information than it did a year ago... I am sure that a reduction of 5 minutes per hour could be explained away by this...
Have you read the Moderator Guidelines yet?
And the hidden variable is...broadband. Faster access = less surf time. Lets see a comparison of bytes downloaded to avoid a flawed conclusion, like the RIAA's conclusion that Napster caused the drop in CD sales during the middle of a recession that ate up a lot of disposable income...
"What is the sound of one belly slapping?"
I'm not sure a decrease from 90 to 83 minutes per session means that people don't find the internet as compelling. First off, I wonder how that relates to the average TV watching session?
Second, people using the internet are more aware of how to find what they're looking for. Think just a few years back, comparing researching using AltaVista & Yahoo to using Google these days. Finding things faster lets you spend less time online.
Finally, isn't it also possible that more people have faster connections now? In March 2000, probably 40% of the population was still on 33.6 modems, and only 5-10% had broadband. Just about everyone has 56K at least now, and a lot more have broadband than ever before. Faster connections mean you need less time to get the same amount done.
Where are we going and why am I in this handbasket?
First, I'd like to say that the little fucking remark about "trolling" was tits. _Trolling_ is just as fun, but _browsing_ or, as fucktard journalists and OfficeMax associates like to call it _surfing_, is banal and extremely fucking base.
I've seen all the fucking snatch and tits I care to see, have more fucking music that I can even listen to in my life, posess in excess of 100 fucking thousand dollars of commercial apps and games, and chewed my motherfucking wrists to shit playing Quake and MOHAA online.I was so fucking burned out on the web that I, get this cocksucking shit, I bought a shitfucking load of books. Some damn fine books too.
It took countless sessions of late night porn, orgiastic download sessions of mp3s and obscene amounts of time reading banal and entirely fucking base blogger bullshit before I got bored. I have the attention span of a 7 month old embryo. That's no fucking joke. But I managed to find joy in the web for at least 7 years. But, this fucker is tired hack now. All that's left for me is the random search on google for "fucking profanity, motherfucker" to find neat and exciting cuss words, and slashdot to use them.
Did AOL shorten the amount of time you could be idle with your connection before they boot you?
I know when I was first on the web there was a plethora (I have always wanted to use that word) of information to be discovered. Now days I sometimes find myself struggling to find good information to read. I read Slashdot, and then go to [H]ardOCP and Gameguru - I get almost identical stories. In the past I would stay on the 'net to chat to people, until one day when I realized that the people you chatted to online weren't real people, they were just the identities they projected on the web. BBSing and MUDing are becoming more irrelevent. Also, today people have maybe finished looking for what really happened on Babylon 5/Neo Genesis and only use the web for roles (messaging/email)
Goodbye 14 hour telnet bbs/mud sessions, I won't miss you.
Error: Erection reset by beer.
What defines an 'Online Session'?
I hardly ever sit down and 'browse the web' for 80min at a time. I go to Google, find what I want, and return to what I was doing. Of course, I am 'online' most of the day. Is Google making a difference when it comes to people's 'online session time'??
Make them smaller!
1. Crank up the resolution on your monitor (1600x1200 is nice)
2. Crank up the font size in your browser
Enjoy large, readable text with smaller graphics!
m00.
There's no point in surfing for surfing's sake anymore, not for me at least. I reached the End of the Internet a couple months ago.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
We need new content on the smut sites.
When people went to their mailboxes expecting things like personal correspondence and the most annoying thing were the bills sent by creditors.
Now, I spend almost 10 minutes a week culling spam from my post office box.
The medium isn't fun any more.
Likewise, while the total amount of content has gone up on the web, the ratio of spam to content has increased.
One of the many without broadband at home, I can testify that waiting for advertising images to download over a 56k line has made web browsing a less frequent part of my life.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
- lack of decent free porn (only 12 yo boys can come in 8 seconds)
- grotesque and prolific advertising including massive fucking banner and pop up ads
- spam, in all it's mutations
- FLASH
- JavaScript
- Abuse of Registration practices (forced to register for everything, even WAITING IN LINE hint hint FILEPLANET)
maybe that's just me but those are my reasons.. in no particular order
Part of this is probably due to sites switching to pay content. I know I visit salon.com, fool.com, etc. a lot less than I used to when they were free. I still spend a significant amount of time online, but mostly I go over the same dozen sites repeatedly, and don't wander aimlessly for new stuff quite so much anymore.
Now, I wasn't there for this, but I do recall a few stories of how, when TV first became a household item, people would watch constantly, even taking it into the dining room to watch during dinner.
/.), unless something's relevent to me personally (local news for example), I'm just not interested in surfing the net for nonsense anymore. The sheer glut of porn and badly designed, useless sites has increased to an insane degree; the new sites i find that actually hold my interest for more than two clicks of a mouse are few and far between. Sure, it was fun when the net was new, but nowadays I'd sooner read a book.
The novelty soon wore off, with the parental units now demanding that the tv be off during mealtimes (at least in my home), and that tv was for after homework.
The same goes for the Net as an entertainment medium. While the use of the net for work (email, conferencing, etc) has increased steadily, the stats have been showing for quite some time that pure 'silly' surfing has declined. And after using a computer all day, every day for years during my work life, the LAST thing i want to do when I get home is sit in front of another computer screen.
For me, I just got bored with the whole thing. Other than a few staples (like uffie and
At one point I'd probably have qualified as an internet 'compulsive', chatting constantly, losing out on sleep and socializing cause I HAD to be on the net, surfing with one hand while typing frantically in chat rooms with the other... now I chat rarely (in 5 to 10 minute bursts every few days), and my morning surf lasts about 30 minutes tops as I check news and information sites for my fix. Things change, people evolve... personally, I see this as A Good Thing (tm). If i ever started slipping back into my old habits, i'd toss my computer straight onto the garbage heap.
Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo - H. G. Wells
I'm too lazy to look for content...I wish content that I found interesting would somehow magically migrate towards me.
The reduction in the amount of time people are spending online is likely because they're getting more done in less time. More web sites are "one stop shopping", web searchers are getting better, internet connections are getting faster, users are becoming more savvy about how to find stuff. Everyone has a certain set of sites they visit all the time and they don't have to spend time finding new things. Once something becomes routine, it can be done much more quickly.
... "Give me a woman who loves beer and I will conquer the w
9:00 - Start with hotmail and yahoo checking email and deciding that I dont want to view webcams/ dont want to increase my penis size and deciding against making 20,000 under an hour. Increasingly, of the 20 emails on my hotmail folder over night, only one is of relevance a whopping 19:1 ratio, where as my yahoo folder has very less spam (3-4 per week).
9:15 - Trolling on Slashdot. Usually refrain from commenting on articles.
9:30 - Manager comes by, hides slashdot under IDE.
9:35 - Back on Slashdot. hitting F5 every one minute.
9:45 - TheRegister, Cnet.com, Wired.com, and Nytimes.com. Finally gave in and registered at NYTimes.com. Not much spam from them anyway.
10:00 - Meeting to decide whether DTDs or Schemas make sense. Must stay awake till lunchtime..
11:30 - Register,Cnet,Wired,NyTimes and Slashdot. Have to check for new stories.
And the saga continuess...
Rapid Nirvana
Web-browsing used to being up a plethora of intelligent, well-written, interesting pages back in the days of the Internet being a largely academic arena. Now that everybody and their pet dingo are online, the quality of content has gone down dramatically; especially on unmoderated forums. Proper spelling and grammar have all but disappeared from the 'net, and only us "old timers" bother with things like netiquette.
Sure, it's cute that Grandma can email her grandkids whenever she feels the need, but with that comes a thousand hastily-designed pages on Geocities, all alike, proclaiming between BLINK tags how different and special each one of them is.
I've retreated almost totally into USENET, mailing lists, and a few IRC channels that still offer a modicum of intelligent conversation and interesting information. I don't accept HTML email, and although I still browse slashdot and K5, I don't post as regularly as I used to.
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I Hit the Karma Cap, and All I Got Was This Lousy
My browsing from home is down, because the performance of my dialup connection just gets worse and worse. I have tried five different providers. I watch the performance in the kppp details window and
it is clear that I get short bursts of throughput and nothing for 10's of seconds up to minutes. My connection looks like it is usable only 10% of the time.
I can't get DSl and the cable is one way and incompatible with Linux as far as I can tell.
I'm finding that the good useless information is dying out slowly. I keep getting page not found errors when I try finding good garbage. It seems like half the time I try to get something (like a new MUGEN character) the file/page is nowhere to be found. Of course I look for some obscure things now and then, but that's what I love(d) about the internet.
Heroscape, it's like legos combined with anachronistic wargames.
It is because over the last 2 years everyone has found out where their favorite porn is now.
*SPIT* BINGO!
Neck_of_the_Woods
#/usr/local/surf/glassy/overhead
How the heck do they know how much time I spend looking at the browser?
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There is plenty of compelling content online for kids, at least as far as hey are concerned. Sites like neopets, Cartoon orbit and many other similar sites keep my 6th grader (and everyone she knows) on the web for as much time as she is allowed .
I guess looking at a coffee pot/fish tank in another state loses its novelty after a while...
Have you read the Moderator Guidelines yet?
How do they measure "online sessions"? Is this for dial-up connections? Those people who stay on for hours at a time will be the most likely to have upgraded to an always-on DSL or cable line, and would've skewed the measurements.
"It's like walking down the streets of Tijuana."
I don't know how this guy uses a mouse with one arm around a hussy and a bottle of tequila tucked beneath the other.
Ok, being a student at RIT the typical Surfing session lasts from about September 3rd, till May 24th. Give or take a few days for breaks and toilet visits. Well, i don't speak for everyone with that statistic... just a small fraction. However i never saw the internet as a form of 'long' entertainment. My typical sessions involve hopping on and checking email... looking at the funny links my friends send around, check in on IRC and then just idle away as i go to play countless hours of Virtua Tennis.
The internet was never entertaining, i don't know who found it to be. I guess you could kill 83 minutes looking at pornography but even after a few days of that.. you've seen it all. Not to mention pop-up ads promote suicide.
The day the internet reigns above TV or movies will startle me, and i will move to mars, i hope we can by then.
-ricci
that the comparison to TV and other outlets for entertainment will continue to be more popular, not just because they have been around much longer, but because they are not there mainly to feed the brain with information, but to entertain... It is just like the Playstation/XBox -vs- GameCube argument: the latter are both _entertainment_ systems and are advertised as such, whereas the former is a _gaming_ platform. The internet is an information platform and communications media. Not the best place to have entertainment, unless you really like watching public television(which most here do, I'm sure lol)
People used to be on the web more because there was'nt much more to do than just surf around. But now that we have p2p and instant messaging, people are comming on the internet with a task they want to accomplish. Wether it be to download the latest mp3 or to check some sports scores.
Hacker Media
How many people actually sit down at the computer, open a browser, and think to themselves "Let's see what's on the Internet tonight" ?
/., the reason I come here is to find out what's going on in the sci/tech/geek world.
While there are some very entertaining threads on message boards like
I do searches for programming reference, I look up maps and driving directions, I occaisionally buy stuff. I know that some people like to stream/download lots of music/video clips, but your average AOL dialup user? It doesn't seem likely.
I use the internet all the damn time, but it would never occur to me to draw some kind of correlation between how much TV I watch per week and how much time I spend on the internet, and come up with some kind of conclusion re: the internet as entertainment medium.
Here's my half-serious theory - given how many dot coms went under between 3/2000 and 3/2001, maybe we can attribute some of that decline in web surfing to the those thousands of dot com employees who were suddenly wrenched from the teat of the company T1.
Hey NYT, if you're reading: stick a fork in it.
sulli
RTFJ.
It's hard for me to validate this survey's results after reloading /. for the 10th time already today...
You mean, you can use the web for something other than entertainment?
./ effect works on the readers as well as the servers
--Nathaniel
who believes the
I'm sure at least part of that 7 minutes is in relation to increased knowledge of how to effectively use the net by the average user. How many of us use to take 10 minutes for a new task which now we feel we can do in our sleep? Also, better search engines probably contribute to finding content more quickly and efficiently.
BigCat79
"The dead have risen and are voting Republican!" --Bart Simpson
I never fucking bitch about dumbass mods, but yo mofos, get yer head out of yer cunt, Profane Motherfucker is funnier than your ass I guarantee. Mod this one back up where it belongs or I will piss down your throat.
I believe there are a number of reasons why the whole surfing thing is beginning to fade. First, the true jems of the Web are no longer free or easy to access. I used to be able to point people to quite a number of free encyclopedias, dictionaries, etc. While they still exist, many of these resources now pop banners and make it quite difficult to find anything enjoyable about using the service. Also, so much of the content is now out of date. Those businesses who jumped into the fray a few years ago seemingly did not reap any benefits from their actions so they allowed their sites to collect dust bunnies. Maintaining a large Web site, while not technically difficult, is somewhat time consuming and offers little in terms of physical gratification. If the money's not pouring in from such a venture, I highly suspect most small to medium businesses are going to give it much of a thought. Finally, every time we turn around we hear of another really neat application of this thing we call the Net being beaten down into the ground because it infringes on some thing's right to exist, or make money, or, you get the point. Why in the world would I want to develop something new and fresh with the knowledge that my efforts will land me in jail. I don't know about the rest of you, but I have better things to do with my time than join the prison boxing team because I allowed somebody halfway around the world to download a file from my machine. I'm a Webmaster and developer and to be honest with you the whole thing makes me sick at times. If it's not crappy, useless, out-of-date content, then it's time to bone up the money. Let's see, 20 bucks for Web access (piss-poor performance at 37K or so), 40 bucks for a cell phone, 15 bucks for a pager, 60 bucks for a satellite, blah, blah, tivo, blah, satellite radio, blah, a couple of pay-for-access sites, blah, blah. Where will it end. I personally cannot afford to continue to allow content providers to suck every last lincoln out of my pocket, even if the content was enough to make me do so. If somebody wants any more of the pie, they better damn well be offering something that a) I cannot get anywhere else, b) is better than any of its competitors, c) etc. Time to step down, ooooo -- PenguinDung
P2P, IM, online gaming... Instead of 'Trolling the web' looking for something to do, people have actually FOUND something to do..
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
I know I don't spend near as much time looking for stuff now that Google is around.
But also the number of sites being visited is decreasing. Patterns are showing that surfers are visiting the same sites over and over and not visiting new sites. Just like television viewing habits, where a family gets a set schedule of watching the same shows over and over, the same is happening to the web. I find myself with the same set of bookmarks and using those to find the information I need. For instance, the average British user visits only 12 sites a week. I feel like I'm stuck in a rut sometimes when I'm surfing.
Personally, I seldom get bored on the net because one interesting page/site usually leads to another and another.. etc
But I have some friends that only go online to chat here and there or to see specific sites they heard about.. They usually just log off after a few minutes.
I think if you're the kind of person that loves to constantly learn about things, the net has plenty to check out and is constantly being updated too.
Right now this works great because most sites are free and advertiser supported, but I wonder what the net will be like when most of the good sites force you to pay up...
I can't be compelled anymore usually to surf beyond the usual dynamic sites i check(livejournal, slashdot, fark, and any forum I'm a regular on), but it seems to me the web is just getting slower and slower. Nope, it's not my connection it seems. I get the same random DNS errors and such at work, or even at a friend's house. It gets to the point where if the page I'm looking for on a list of search engine results doesn't come up within x seconds, screwit.
:)
Another thing is that the pop-up ads have got to go. Remember when it was just ONE pop-up ad from ONE website, that being Geocities? Now it's on practically every website out there, minus Slashdot, thank you. I don't believe everyone's website is so dang popular they can't afford the bandwidth charges, forcing them to get pop-up ads. Yes, I know you can stop them, but think of how much pop-up ad banner traffic is taking up on a global scale.
And yes, the search engine results are getting slopper and sloppier. Any search on google will get you 50% 404 errors, or horribly-done web pages usually on angelfire or geoshitties.
Livejournal? Great concept, if you don't mind taking a crap shoot trying to load up a page. it's down about half the time now, if not totally overrun by drama queens.
Oh where have the days of the creative web pages gone done by university students on their spare time?
I've found myself watching TV more nowadays, and I don't even have cable.
I saw this as the random quote at the bottom of the page:
Never trust a child farther than you can throw it.
If you have children, please PLEASE make sure they wear well padded clothing for these tests.
It takes about 7 minutes for me to kill popups after looking at Porn. I switched to Opera in the last year and don't have that problem now.
Sorry guys, didn't mean to throw the curve.
"Derp de derp."
Or did slashdot intentionally pick this article to change the ad server from m.doubleclick.net to m2.doubleclick.net?
Does anyone know if *.doubleclick.net works for mozilla image blocking?
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
The decreasing time people spend online could be the result of:
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Hey, that's funny, cause I actually use the 'Net to get movies.
God bless DivX.
"Today, Mr. Davis has not only kicked his Web habit but also almost completely given up the medium." *Sigh* I remember some news articles suggesting that people were spending too much time on the web. They made it out like the web was addictive and that kids would trade social lives for it. I hated this assumption. I knew people that spent lots of time on IRC, heck I was one of them. It wasnt an addiction so much as just hanging out. Most of the time I was on IRC I was also reading about stuff on the net, trying out new apps, etc. Nowadays, I've achieved some skills that I'm really interested in sharpening. So now a lot of my 'net time' is being spent developing new artwork. I found a place to show off my art, get some critique, and measure myself against the other people out there. I've really integrated the net into my life. I know use both email and instant messaging to keep tabs on my friends, I use tools like Mapquest to get directions to where I'm going, I even get movie reviews and showtimes! I'm not just hunting around the web anymore, I've figured out where I need to go. It's still a very important part of my life. Am I spending less time on it? Yes, I think so. That time's being spent to contribute to the net, though. For example, I post here waaaay too much. Heh. I'm sick of surfing the web being called 'an addiction' like it needs to be treated. That'd be like saying Nasa scientists are addicted to surfing the universe for interesting things.
"Derp de derp."
You mean people don't like pop-ups anymore?
What is this? Have the New York Times checked their facts?? Oh, forget it, people don't know have to have fun anymore.... back in the days, my friends and I would spend endless hours closing pop-ups, seeing who could close the most! What was GREAT was when closing one opened up another twenty! oh the laughs we had....
how does one change his
Blogs. People can spend less time randomly browsing, and go to their favorite, trusted, reliably interesting link-centric Blogs (as opposed to content-manufacturing, often more journal-y blogs) and see a plethora of interesting stuff: a much higher cool stuff / filler ratio than if you start with, say, a typical search engine.
I think one effect of this is even the Blog compilers do less random surfing, and in fact depend a bit on other blogs. So there's a bit of a circle jerk effect, though enough incidental stuff gets added in from the occassional surfer or tangent to a websearch (for instance, my own gets an infusion from outside sources like Usenet) that over all things don't get too stale.
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
LOL! I think it's funny you were modded down for that. It seems pretty obvious you were joking.
Somebody's trigger finger is itchy today!!
Could somebody mod him back up again? He was illustrating my point.
"Derp de derp."
looking through pages of "faq" and "help" and "html" sites like we did back in the day - we use the tricks of the trade to do what we will
so in other words when the "net" came out most of us had to look at other peoples sites to see what or how or what nifty things one could do in html, cgi, etc... - but now we know what we need to do what we do.
Ave Molech Setting
My average surf time is about 8 hours per day, but I really should be getting more work done.
This is a natural economic process. When it was complicated and expensive to use web, only people that were heavy consumers used it (read: long sessions). As time goes on and it becomes easier and cheaper less intense consumers will get it. Therefore, we should expect the average user surf time to go down. What would be interesting to see is a statistic that breaks down average surfing time by how many years consumer has had internet access (e.g., avg for newbie users, avg for 1 year users, 2 years, etc).
As if anybody who reads slashdot has an average surf session of 83 minutes. Please. We're all still at 4+ hours. :p
Since web browsing lost its lustre for me, I've found that the sites that hold my interest most are (gasp!) membership sites that bring together folks with similar tastes. My current favorite is David Lynch's web site. I don't want to sound like an advertisement, but there's frequently updated content, things you won't get anywhere else like a few different "series" David's putting on just for the site, and there's a very, VERY strong member following centered around two chat areas (which David himself as well as some of the folks behind David's movies frequent). Yes, I pay to be there. But in my opinion, it's worth it. I get no advertisements, I get to filter out all but a segment of our planet that has similar interests to mine, and I get to chat with my favorite movie director (and some actors, and writers, and other directors, and... well, you know).
That, in my opinion, is what the "new" web will be about. There's a lot of free stuff out there, and occasionally some of it is good, but more often than not I find myself "turning it off" like I do with my TV nowadays. More now than ever, on the web you get what you pay for. If I have to pay for quality content, I'm going to.
I do spend less time surfing because Google basically gives me answers faster than when I used hotbot, lycos and yahoo.
I also tend to focus more on what I am looking for rather than click on anything that jumps off my browser.
What browsers ARE still missing is a way to activate flash/scripting on a 'site basis'...that would be an advertisement killer...for a while.
Has anyone ever considered that with the spreading availability of broadband, maybe people are finally finding this
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
The same way Neilson knows what you watch on TV.
Surveys.
It'll be interesting to see where the Net fits in relative to TV and movies for pure entertainment.
When the internet goes the way of the TV, I'm sure we'll end up with a device like TiVo which will do my internet surfing for me. I'll tell it what I like and it'll do searches daily for any content relating to that subject. Oh, and it'll eliminate pop-up ads for me.
Of course, by then there will probably be a __AA which will complain that I'm depriving them of precious revenues that they might be getting from pop-up ads. Then they'll tell me I'm breaking the law by saving the content for later viewing.
Ahhh, things to look forward to.
Which is a better way to reach you:
From Whitepages.com
Malda, Robert
2001 Woodlark Dr
PARKDALE, MI 49424
616-399-3125
or
From your registration information on cmdrtaco.net
Malda, Rob
2001 Woodlark Ave
Holland, MI 49424
616-395-5400 (FAX) 616-395-0223
All things in moderation. Get out there and exercise. Get a date. Paint your house. Its just text on a screen.
once again, we have a story -- this time, from the "gray old lady" of print journalism -- that has little, if any, basis in fact. it's based more on assumption, heresay and generalities.
...
i used to be a journalist, so i have some idea how the thinking works: reporter is bored with the internet. reporter commits some fallacy (forget the name) whereby what is thought to be true for one's self is therefore thought to be true for all. reporter goes out and finds quotes from "sources" to back up his assumption. reporter writes story. clueless editor (who is usually more out of touch with reality than the reporters are) runs story. readers who trust the validity of the newspaper therefore assume "if it's in the times, it must be true" and
therefore, what is believed by one reporter is said to be true in general. and it sticks because it came from the new york times.
it's sick, how allegedly independent mainstream journalists can take their biases and make them into news that lots of people across the country just automatically believe to be correct.
Mindy: "Well...desserts aren't always right." Homer: "But they're so sweet!"
...or the content has gotten stupid. Ads and spam don't bother me at all. The problem is the content- there isn't any. For awhile, the best and timliest content was on the web. Now it's been displaced by meaningless advertorial drivel. It's looking more and more like network television- a breadcrumb trail of blurbs and teasers, leading to nothing but more blurbs and teasers.
Maybe not "busted" after all...
"...and generally behaved in a manner one can only describe as despicable." - February 27 2001, Michael Sims
Don't you remember how much better Slashdot was in March 2000? I could read it for hours. Nowadays, I only go into comments for karma.
I was thinking of how to intentionally fail my drug test... It would make a good memoir story someday.
Good, more bandwith for me. :-/
memepool
Need To Know
Weird Ass Shit
still around... there is plenty of fun to be had looking for stuff off the beaten-path. I like surfing for the inane and useless stuff.
i can vouch for the fact that i don't surf as much because i can't stand that just about every useful site has way too much advertising. i don't see why it's completely necessary for all this advertising. i realize it costs money to run a large website but to companies really dislike the normal non-nitrusive banner ads? i don't even mind the ads that i've seen on slashdot as much as some of the other forms of ads i've seen. the big ads that popup and cover the window that i'm trying to look at are really annoying (hollywood.com is a good example of this). luckily they still have a close option so you can stop it before it finishes. i pray that the day doesn't come when there's a full screen ad that doesn't allow you to do anything until it's completely over. that'll be the day i stop using the internet. i don't even mind popups as much as those stupid ads that cover the window. at least you can close popups. the only thing about popups is that they're fine until they start getting intrusive and one page opens up like 15-20 popup ads (i've seen this and it wasn't a porn site). that's obnoxious and unnecessary. the way i look at things is if a company has to go through very intrusive means of advertising, then i will stop buying from them. they lose at least one customer from that. so that's the reason i have cutback on surfing. it's just too annoying and takes too much time to load the ads and close the popups.
i will admit that another reason i don't surf as much is because good content is harder to find, but i have found that it's harder to find because of all the stupid ads, and everyone wants you to click click click to get something, or register to use the website for free or something. free registration is a pain in teh ass too. if i want to read something, i don't want to have to take the time to register. it's a pain in the ass.
please me, have no regrets.
This might also have to do with the increase in online gaming? Most games now allow players to play online, bringing more than just a challenge, but a challenge with peers. So rather than surf the web, more and more people are playing these games, or are spending more time on them?
Just a thought.
Jason Lotito
i though nelson used set top boxes to monitor what's being watched? with digital cable, can't the cable company monitor what's being watched? can't the isp's report on internet activity? how about doubleclick?
"Lee deBoer, former chief executive of Automatic Media, believes that the downturn in the Web is temporary. In the summer of 2000, his company bought Feed and Suck, two popular online magazines, and started Plastic.com, a Web site that allows users to filter interesting Web content for one another. After just a year, Mr. deBoer's company was forced to close its doors, killing both magazines and relinquishing Plastic.com to a group of investors. (The site still exists, run almost entirely by volunteers.)
Even after the bruising taken by his company, Mr. deBoer is not prepared to declare the Web dead. "We've taken a pause," he said, citing a tough advertising climate, a lagging economy and a seriousness that has infused society since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. "But I don't think it's much more than a pause."
yeah, someone pull this guys head out of his ass. It's gonna be a long pause, as everyone I know is sick of the ads. Here's a newsflash Mr DeBoer: If you have good content, people will still hit your site. (Slashdot anyone?) If you have 17 pop-unders, flashing links (click now, you just won $500.00), etc., then you WILL FAIL. How and why are these people still trying so hard to use this out-dated crap model? You wanna know why the web is not being surfed as much?
PEOPLE ARE SICK OF THE BULLSHIT that goes along with trying to get info.
Sent from your iPad.
"Web sites also face stiff competition from other online services".
All the same, I think I like the kind of blatant misinterpretation of statistics that it uses to further its claim.
Consider:
a typical day, March 2000:
a typical day, March 2001:
Now let's do a little math. Average time per online session, March 2000? 90 minutes. Average time per online session, March 2001? 83.3 minutes.
Amazing. Just by replacing an hour and ten minutes of TV with an hour and ten minutes online, you've just reduced your average online session by 7 minutes, while increasing your time online by 38%.
In other words,
according to a survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project in Washington, people averaged 90 minutes per online session. A year later, when the same people were polled, that number had dropped to 83 minutes.
Remember, there are three kinds of statistics: lies, damned lies, and the kind of wanton abuse of mathematics that makes you waste fifteen minutes bitching about it on slashdot.
Live and learn.
--
m iso socially aware artistic geek pen-pal, m or f, in '1337 edu. jazz, poetry a must.
email me (click my user info for addy) if you're interested.
We can go on forever about what might be causing the decline in websurfing, but for starters, we should prove that there is a causal link between amount of time spent online and what people actually get out of the internet.
For instance, the decline in amount of time spent online could be linked to many other factors such as:
As for the articles claims that a lot of formerly popular sites are going offline, I'd argue that that's just market saturation and operating costs finally catching up with them.
As a user of the Internet since 1989 (long before the Web) I can say that I've experienced many espisodes of NetBurnout (TM). I tend to go on long InfoBinges (R) which just get tiresome after a while. There just isn't enough new, interesting content to keep me online. The energy I use in finding some content just doesn't generate enough of a return to keep me coming back indefinately, so I stop.
Stage two is usually one where I start going outdoors again, marveling at what a high-resolution reality has, remembering what its like to see sunlight and pretty girls. At this point the last thing I want to see is a monitor, and the sound fingers clicking on a keyboard nearly makes me ill. I've been there and done all that, why would I want just more of the same?
But the Net always lures me back. Whether its through nerdy friends that tell me about the latest WebPhenomena (TM) I missed, or through a side-trip to the library to research some topic when I re-realize I could get even more information and find some people with similar interests online.
And then there's so much that's changed, so many new ways to interact and the experience is so much richer. Those people who are just burning out for the first time will be back as well. Once you've got the NetMonkey on your back there's no kicking the habit.
:P
---
Anonymity is freedom!
Okay, we all hate ads. Animated banner ads are a shameless attempt to burn a little ad-shaped hole in your brain, dumping their talentless, artless ad copy right down your optic nerve and into your delicate brain. But let's face it, a lot of websites which could not ordinarily afford to exist are paid for in this manner.
Also, for those who remember the web before search engines, you know, in that supposed golden age, you couldn't FIND anything. I mean, it usually looked like there wasn't that much content out there, but I doubt that was ever true, at least once the universities started taking it seriously, well ahead of everyone else. You could have a good time browsing around, but if you wanted information on a specific topic you had to get lucky, or follow an awful lot of links.
Let's especially not forget the fact that google caches things, so as long as people put their information in ordinary HTML (A trend which is becoming less and less common these days) google will hang onto the data for some time, making the web more persistent.
Sure, commercialization hurts, but someone has to pay for all this bandwidth, all these sites, the hosting... Suck it up. Enjoy the fact that all you have to pay for is your connection. It's worth remembering that access outside of a university or corporation used to be hellishly expensive. Compu$erve charged by the minute, and didn't even have internet access for the longest time, though there was internet mail.
So it's cheaper and faster today than it's ever been. There's more content, useful and not, and more search engines (though google is the only one I use any more, since they're least offensive and most useful) to find information inside of it. Sure, the fact that any asshole can put together a webpage means there's more useless crap, but it also means you have access to data you wouldn't otherwise see.
And for those who cannot find anything to read on the web: Become involved in a community site. Slashdot is just one example, and perhaps not the best, because it's (ostensibly) news-driven. That, plus a blip on the radar every time Katz squats and squeezes out another pearl. But there are sites like Everything2 which can keep you busy for many hours if you're possessed of the necessary pedanticism. Hell, even livejournal can hold your interest.
In general, whiners need to spend their time developing content. I like E2 because it's a resource which can help people well into the future, and which helps me now. I also develop my own content; I run one of the larger drinking game sites on the internet (hyperlogos.org) which I should really spend more time on, but I'm too busy putting work into E2 :)
More pages, more search engines, more content, faster connections. When I started using webpages, modems were the standard, and MANY MANY sites were on nothing faster than a 28.8k modem, including The Circus where I lived - And we had a Class C from scruz.net at the time. :)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
What I used to do: get online, troll the web for about 90 minutes, get bored, get offline.
What I do now: log on to FTP, download a pile of Tiny Snow Fairy Sugar, troll the web for about 45 minutes, get bored, get offline and watch the episodes I downloaded.
Though I spend less time browsing the web now, the Internet enables much more of my entertainment than it did in the past. Though I spent only 45 minutes online, If I downloaded three episodes of TSFS in that 45 minutes my total entertainment time is 45+60 or 105 minutes, a longer time than what I have spent in the past.
-inq
I had almost stopped browsing the web alltogether. There were too many adds. It made me mad instead of entertaining me. Go to a page, close 3 popups, and a popunder, click no to installing some stupid spyware plugin, click no to setting this page as my hompage, and so on. It was a chore. Around 0.9.8 I started using mozilla. I set it to not open unrequested windows, and a few other options. Also since not many people use mozilla, none of the homepage/plugin crap is aimed at it, so I get none of that. I feel like I am experiencing the internet again for the first time.
The folks who have been saying "Broadband" are on the right track. I can think of two more factors which have cut my home web surfing time.
:( ) which means when I get home, I'm in the mood for something else. I only surf from home when I'm looking for something specific, which brings me to my second point.
Work Connections
At work, I've got a lot of time for web surfing while waiting for processes to finish (they won't buy me a second processor
Google
Google has cut the time it takes me to find the exact info I'm looking for. I don't spend so much time dealing with extraneous crap, and find exactly what I want.
Of course, I don't create web pages any more either, so I'm not out there looking for ideas.
if ($it != $onething) {$it = $another;}
1) a few people in a few places know about it - it's useful or fun or whatever
2) more people find out about it - it becomes broadly interesting
3) everyone knows about it, but only a few people can get it - it's cool
4) everyone can get it - it becomes passe
We're now entering step 4.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
I recall when I first came online in (I think) '96 or '97 for the first time. Not only was the Internet new to me, but computers as well were new to me - my family got our first computer in mid-96, which was a 66Mhz Pentium with 8M of RAM, 14.4kbps modem, and Windows 95.
:) )
At the time, it took ages for things to load, download, and such. I was inexperienced with computers, as well as the Internet, so I was quite innept with what I was doing. All these things combined to create a longer period of time spent online. (I recall spending 5 hours at a time spent -just- surfing - I recall this, because that's how long I could stay connected to my ISP at a time
Another factor, I think, is that there were a lot more things that I found interesting back then. For instance, my younger brother and I spent a lot of time trying to find cool programs to theme win95 in a more asthetic manner (higher quality icons, for instance, backgrounds,etc), as well as the actual media. These things simply aren't that interesting any more, and my overall online time is spent checking a dozen to two dozen sites a day, quickly (including online comics), and browsing several sites similar to slashdot, occasionally posting, and IM/IRC. I'll occassionally see something interesting on a site I'm looking at, follow the link, and have my mental process trail off and direct me to search for other things for the next hour or two.
I think that the majority of the people now online have already established their browsing habits, and aren't interested in the other information out there. Most people I know don't spend 80 minutes 'surfing' - most of their time online is spent chatting and occasionally looking at a web site, etc.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
I remember when there used to be good websites around, I could spend hours at them, but now all you have is rehashed news with pop ups and banner ads.
Remember adcritic in its time? blazing speed, good commericals then they ran out of money. Along with a lot of good sites.
The internet used to be about other things, now it is just a business to make as much as possible. Take anandtech for example, their servers used to be fast, but now, unless you pay, you get a flakey (at best) connection which often doesn't connect, and won't go faster then a 28.8k modem. That site was raking in the dough, now they want more, not to mention they haven't posted any hardware reviews lately, just tech previews. Talk about getting less for more.
Now its rare for me to find a good site, and when I do, its one of those sites you check once a week or less to see if anything good is on.
Sometimes I watch tv rather then sift through internet crap, and I never used to watch tv.
Is it possible that this significant change in time has come about because people have started getting broadband connections?
The time I spend looking for things at home on my 24.4kbps dialup connection is signficantly more than the time I spend at work on the T-1. I would be willing to bet there is at least a ten minute difference. And if I got broadband at home next year (I wish), then the change would be noted in my internet habits too.
Most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do.
"It'll be interesting to see where the Net fits in relative to TV and movies for pure entertainment."
they have entertainment on TV & movies? all ive seen is garbage being passed off as entertainment.
I too, have grown tired of the web. Missing the nestalgia of calling bbs, I have recently been telneting to them again. Its great, you feel the community is smaller, you share files, you ask questions and share info.
My guess is that one of the next killer apps will be some cross between p2p and bbs's. This way the sysop doesn't have to manage the files and eliminates his bandwidth problems, you get a more fimuluar way of downloading for newbies, the fun message boards of old and the smaller community feel.
I urge people to get back into the bbs scene!
I would guess that the average amount of content consumed is actually greater, even if the length of sessions are donw.
Yeah, um Surfing lost it's luster after 1994. Pop-up ads galore, banner ads, crappy java apps, flash sites that look like ass, corporate bullshit. What do you want. I want the text only web back, where having an image that loaded over 56k in under 10 seconds was 'high-tech'. just my 2
it's a sig, wtf?
I remember years ago hearing about the "talk to my cat" site. You could go ONLINE, find this guy's WEB PAGE, and type a sentence, and his voice-synthesizer would say it in the room in which his CAT was kept! I could TALK TO HIS CAT! That was such a hilarious thing!
And I could go to this other WEB PAGE, and find out the temperature of the can of Coke in this one graduate student's REFRIGERATOR! Can you believe it?
Now? I'm sure there is lots of fun stuff like that out there, but it isn't as interesting to me anymore. I still think its cool that people CAN do stuff like that, but I don't feel a need to go to the actual site and witness the effect.
...and Radiskull hasn't been updated in months.
DJS
God is real unless declared integer
Maybe wouldn't have anything to do with the failure of broadband, the fact that pretty much anything worth looking at on the net is going pay-per-page when it used to be free, the fact that ISPs are starting to charge much more for hosting, and are limiting standard accounts so that if you want to host from your own machine you have to pay much more, or the fact that armies of hungry lawyers are scouring the net looking for anything that might be construed as copyrighted.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
A while ago (3 years in fact) I wrote a small column for a different forum (now defunct). That basically stated that the web should be stay free and that the web should be used for informational not transactional operations. IE: A company should post all information about a product but the purchase by that product should be handled by a different protocol not http. https should be used to create virtual communities and http for a public web page.
/.
And also that advertising on the web should be banned. The reasons was that I was sure that if the web became to much of a commerical it would lose it's usefulness and become stale and boring. It's an excellent medium for many to many communications (and that's why the goverment has had a hard time of passing the CDA I & II theres not a one to many medium like public television so it's protected.) but not I great idea for high commercialization because if you want commercials watch TV! People are now getting tired of entering search requests for information but instead are getting companies websites selling the product.
Also, because of commercialization it becomes easier for the goverment to say it's less of a many to many medium and predomiately a one to many medium. Once that happens watch how fast the CDA's will come back and censor the web. It's bad enough when the ISP's have censored things just think how it will be when the goverment starts...I'll see if I can find that article for reposting here at
Save Pangaea!! Stop Continental Drift!!
It's funny in a way, because last week my (crappy Verizon POS lousy customer service unreliable) DSL connection was down for a day and a half. My wife suggested that I call an alternative provider, and my answer was, "I was going to, but I can't find the number because the 'net connection is down." It was only when she looked at me as if I'd suddenly sprouted a dead weasel on my forehead that I realized that phone books still exist.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
After you have seen hapsters dance on your monitor about 47 times, it looses it appeal.
The problem as I see it is that I have no personality of my own.
"The New York Times has an article about how trolling the web is not nearly as much fun as it used to be.
Sure, but trolling Slashdot is still a well-respected pastime.
Kind thoughts do not change the world
popup
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
Nielsen ratings are based on a couple of things, though the majority of the information comes from set top boxes, which could maybe be construed as a survey, but probably not the kind that you're thinking about. They have some useful information about how they do what they do, along with a little elementary statistical analysis of why their results mean something.
Not like TV is worth watching anyways. I get most of my news off the net, with a grain of salt.
I've found that instead of surfing the web, I get my web needs filled by building new pages. Trying to create something that can contribute to the web, not just trying to find something out there. But then again, I now have a son, so maybe that's why I'm online less.
THIS SPACE FOR RENT
Rolist.com
There be the sheep who will do what a web page tell him/her to do. :p :)
(Continues browsing)
--- Sueños del Sur - a webcomic about four young siblings
Sorry, typo in above link.
Am I the only one who considers a drop in usage from two years ago to one year ago to be somewhat useless today?
First off, forgetting even that the trend is a year old, and that that amounts to a whopping 10% of the internet's life (and something like half its life in the popular vein), the internet of 2000 was vastly different from the internet of 2001. Search engines and "best of breed" info sites had gotten smarter. If you don't have to search as hard, you don't spend as much time. Natch.
Second: since the internet has continued to evolve into 2002, we find that these numbers probably have less bearing than ever before. There is no longer as big of a problem with getting online, in part thanks to broadband and the prevalence of huge modem arrays at the biggest ISPs, but also because machines are generally left logged in. If you don't need to set aside all your internet time at once. Furthermore, the sites visited now are different sites than a year ago; many of the old big'uns are gone, and there are new big'uns in their place. Not to mention that a lot of browser time is being eaten up deleting spam and searching kazaa.
In the end, a metric from a year ago is the most useless thing the internet can have -- so useless that the Times should be embarrassed that they wasted newsprint that could have held a hawt Donna Karran ad with this piece of trash article. The internet, which has become like language and culture in that it is a tremulous, uncertain entity that can only be defined in snapshots, craves instant data. It needs the archive.orgs and Jupiter mm's of the world to tell us what's really going on at the moment...not what was going on at this moment last year.
Might as well tell us what heiroglyphic porn sites the Pharoahs visited, or Judas Iscariot's favorite message board on Freenet.
Maybe I shouldn't have had all those lunchbeers...
Hey freaks: now you're ju
... even /. gets most of its submissions from Drudge and memepool.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Methinks the average browsing session may be decreasing due to disconnects. As the national ISPs buy up the little mom-and-pop ISPs, it puts more demand on their dial-up servers and more users get disconnected and have to redial. Even my DSL goes down at least once a day and my Linksys has to reconnect.
"As flies to the wanton boys are we to the gods; they kill us for sport." - William Shakespeare, King Lear
A long, long time ago... I can still remember how The net used to make me smile. And I knew if I had my chance, That I could make Web Sites that danced, And maybe they'd stay up for a while. But February made me shiver, With every 404 I'd was delivered, Bad news on the net Napster's death was eminent. I can't remember if I cried When I read about Metalica's pride But something touched me deep inside, The day the RIAA cried... Bye, bye Mr. Pirate type guy we shut Down Napster, and their partners cause our pockets were dry... Sued those good ol' boys with our lawyers paid high, Singing this will be the day the net dies, this will be the day net dies... Did you steal the book of love? And do you have faith in the laws above If their lawyer tells you so Do you believe in rock n roll Then pay too much for the CD and save your soul So you can pay and pay the artist real slow Well they knew we were in love with the net 'Cause they watched us downloading kilobits We didn't think they'd sue off napster's shoes No more downloading those rhythm and blues! They were a corporation scared to lose a buck To students downloading music by the truck they made sure our searches were out of luck The day that napster died They started singin'... Bye, bye Mr. Pirate type guy we shut Down Napster, and their partners cause our pockets were dry... Sued those good ol' boys with our lawyers paid high, Singing this will be the day the net dies, this will be the day net dies... Now for 2 years we've been on our own using DC, Kazaa and GNUtella and others unknown But that's not how it used to be When the 56k was the fastest speed there were no ebay bids for a coat from James Dean Just a free net-voice that came from you and me And while the company profits weren't looking down commercialization stole the net's true crown The courtroom was adjourned New verdicts were returned While companies registered their trade marks We used screen names like YoGrark And kept downloading in the dark The day that napster died But they kept singin' Bye, bye Mr. Pirate type guy we shut Down Napster, and their partners cause our pockets were dry... Sued those good ol' boys with our lawyers paid high, Singing this will be the day the net dies, this will be the day net dies... Helter Skelter in a summer swelter We surfed free services in AC'd shelters Broadband Eighty bucks/month and falling fast IPO's coming out our ass The dot-com's CEO's held a silent mass With the accountant's on the sidelines in a cast Now the Millenium air was sweet perfume While free-ISP's played a marching tune We all got up to dance Oh, but we never got the chance 'Cause the bankrupt players tried to take the field, And 404's refused to yield. Do you recall what was revealed, The day that napster died? We heard them singing Bye, bye Mr.. Pirate type guy we shut Down Napster, and their partners cause our pockets were dry... Sued those good ol' boys with our lawyers paid high, Singing this will be the day the net dies, this will be the day net dies... There we were all in one place A generation lost in space With no time left to start our download again So come on Metalica be nimble, Metalica be quick variations would soon stick 'Cause free is the pirater's only friend. As we watched them on the Legal stage My hands were clenched in fists of rage No angel born in hell Could take our right to miss-spel And as lawyers fees climbed high into the night To light the digital millenium's rite I saw satan laughing with delight the day that napster's died. I met a girl who downloaded all the blues And I asked her for some downloads too But she just cried and turned away I went back to my bookmark stored Where I'd downloaded MP3's years before But the injunction there said the music wouldn't play And in the chatrooms the users screamed The l33t survived and newbies dreamed But not a word was spoken The MP3 links all were broken And the Program we admired most was shut down, now Napster's toast We heard courts decision from coast The day that napster died The lawyers were singin' Bye, bye Mr. Pirate type guy we shut Down Napster, and their partners cause our pockets were dry... Sued those good ol' boys with our lawyers paid high, Singing this will be the day the net dies, this will be the day net dies. - That's the version Madonna should have sang. -YoGrark
Canadian Bred with American Buttering
is that thing still around?
or
They got internet on computers now?
Soon, my friend, internet and TV will be one and the same. Quite a few companies are allready working on the infamous all-in-one entertainment centers, and there isn't any reason that a cable line running into my house can offer TV from the cable company and not from other stations (well, there are a few, such as the company limited my internet speed, different methods of transmission, lower levels of reliability, but I digress) so I'm just wondering, 'How Long?'.
Of course, the new media spawned by this will tell about the evils of increased internet usage and how the number of obese people has reason another 10%, discluding the fact that the guidelines for obesity have been raised by the health nuts in charge and their ego trips. But maybe we'll have some real compitition from private stations, and maybe we'll have some really kick ass new shows and realiable news, who knows.
Okay this one is definately going anonymous coward.
There are so many free pr0n sites that you should never ever need to pay for pr0n. you want pictures www.persiankitty.com, movies - plenty of those too. Either mod the above comment up as funny or mod it down asa retardidity!
i found a chick on the internet to bone with so now i dont have to masturbate to so much porn :)
Actually it would be significant. It's an indicator of people's behavior. A relatively constant session time would indicate people are most likely browsing, following links and wandering around in the on-line equivalent of window-shopping at the mall. A steadily decreasing session time would indicate that people are instead using search engines, bookmarks or some other method of locating what they need/want, going there, doing what they need done and then leaving. The first would be indicative of entertainment or casual use, the second is more indicative of purposeful, goal-directed use, with all the implications for things like advertising the different entails.
This is not news, folks. Most of the web is crap.
That's why I've always maintained the belief that your favorite friendly interactive BBS is still a better place to spend your online time. There are people there. People to interact with. People to share views, opinions, and feelings with. The web is a one-way medium, and with the commercialization of it, it has become as boring and sterile as the rest of mainstream media. The BBS is not, and never will be. That's why small, friendly online communities are thriving.
Go ahead. Visit a BBS and get back to what we all know the real online experience is all about!
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
Now that all those media giants with their "creaative talent" and "amazing content" are on-line, that ads and Flash applets blink at us from everywhere, how could the web possibly be less fun than when it was mostly pages created by amateurs for fun? Maybe Americans have more taste and community spirit than the media giants and politicians give them credit for after all. Let's hope politicians will take that into account when drawing the line between the rights of Disney and the rights of grandma.
When I get bored with what's online I head over to Portal of Evil and see what's shaking there. It's kinda like when the big top gets boring you head to the sideshow to check out the freaks. :)
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
I agree. It is like being a child, everything seemed wonderous and interesting when we were kids. Now that we've been around for a while a lot of it is old hat and we see the flaws in things we thought were so great back then. I look at the Saturday morning cartoons I used to watch as a kid and now think how awful they are (with the exception of classic Warner Bros).
Same goes for web sites. Being able to see a coffee pot in England, wow! Watching people in their homes, reading rants, wooo! But now seeing a coffee pot in England is as interesting as staring at a coffee pot and watching someone at home is as thrilling as watching an empty couch or someone shuffling around the kitchen. Websurfers have basically grown up.
I'm not going to waste my time on sites with countless broken links, horrible spelling/grammar, personal info "shakedowns" (you can't see anything unless you register), endless popup ads, font fetishes, demanding you download some plug-in, or a total lack of original material or even a useful link list. Plus, if you expect $ it had better be good.
I guess I've gotten a lot pickier about what I consider interesting.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Remeber how great gopher used to be? It was the shit for those of us on terminal connections back in the day. Forget Lynx, with gopher you had everything right there in a logically organized menu system. Find what you need & the read the text file or save the gif to your server to be transmitted to you via xmodem, zmodem, kermit, etc. And chatting? Who could beat the old-school Unix chat client or command-line IRC... damn, now I feel old (and I'm still 2 weeks from 24 *sigh*).
I find the community over at the most controversial site on the Internet always provide a thought-provoking discussion of the issues at hand.
Usenet is the worst Spam swamp on the net. It has become virtually unreadable unless it is moderated.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Now people not only know the basics of how to surf, they have gravitated toward familiar sites. Sure, there's the occasional search, but most folks have a staple of "go-to" URLs.
Even you geeks. How many of you have bookmarks categorized by topics? News. Sports. Weather. Technical references. Pr0n.
USian Pie did it better
For passive media like television the only way to detect activity is to detect changes. If I leave my tv on the same channel for four hours, I might be watching a movie, or I might be dead.
WWW is even worse since it's stateless. I could download a long article on a single page and spend the next hour reading it or I might get into a game of Minesweeper. This is one of the reasons I think some online journals broke articles into bits (although cynics say it was to increase ad impressions): you can check interest by how many people click to the next page. But as long as the methodology is the same from study to study, the conclusions are at least as valid as the assumptions. Since so different people will use different methods and have different assumptions these sorts of studies are fairly subjective.
I do not have a signature
Yes, it is a very useful metric. It is also very old -- sufficiently old to be considered historical and therefore having little bearing on the current status of the net. Furthermore, a decrease over one year does not a trend make.
Which was my point.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
Ads and all are annoying, but required registering for a site has become much more common too. It isn't worth the time to register for something I'm pretty sure I'm never going to come back to.
In general, I'm surfing less because of less good content.
I found that in my area (Calgary, Alberta), the number of outside web-cams actually dropped last year - companies with popular web cams took them away.
I also think that it's getting harder for individuals to put up web cams - or other stuff. If it's good, it gets popular - and your reward is that your ISP cuts you off for excessive bandwidth usage.
W9x:Thanks for the make-work project Bill.
He's trying to make a point about those damn recursive pop-ups! He's not being off topic or redundant.
Is anybody else tired of that commercial?
I personally find it less interesting because of advertisements. Banner ads and popups are the #1 reason to disable java script, uninstall macromedia's flash plugins, and use a browser like Lynx. I'm waiting to turn on my web browser one day and find a rerun of Hogan's Hero's playing. God I loved that show, SHHHHUUUUULLLTTZZZ! :)
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
I have to say that I am honestly surprised by this result. I have decided to put it down to a few things
1) The novelty has worn off.
With the sudden surge in Internet users, there were suddenly a mass of inexperienced users all trying to get the most from this new medium for information and communication. The idea that it is for everyone and everyone can do what they like on it was extremely powerful. Up popped lots of pages of ordinary people. Now most people are used to the internet, they are starting to use it as a tool rather than an experiment. Hence they use it more specifically, and so for less time.
2) People have learnt that whilst writing your email, you don't actually have to be online. They now write to their friends offline, and go online for the two minutes only to send it.
3) People have got rather nasty phonebills. They realise "ah, so this internet isn't really free" and don't use it so much.
4) People are getting more experienced with the internet, and spend less time looking on useless websites.
5) Dare I say that, well, it's boring! It takes people a while to realise that whilst the internet is a marvellous thing, it's not really that useful for every day living just yet.
I don't think so.
I think we've all become more savvy in our surfing. We don't just click and hope it will take us where we want to go, I think we are simply finding that the information we're looking for is easier to find, and that having to "look" for it easier. We don't have the "onion layered" websites anymore. For me, I know that when I go to a site, I'll find what I want quickly and without having to wait while the page is being downloaded. Most sites now opt for smaller images to help save bandwidth and to speed page loads. Programmed their sites better to make the code cleaner, and the cross-platform viewing better.
Lost its luster? Not hardly. Up to the second news reporting, better product information, buying guides, and direct contact with companies when you're shopping. The net is still growing, and I don't think we've even got a clue of how much it will play a role in peoples lives.
Goran
Carpe Scrotum - The only way to deal with your competition.
I think what's happened is that in the last five years or so the Web has transitioned from Library of Alexandria to a 24/7 larger-than-life television advert. People don't want to read such pabulum for hours on end.
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
Now that the web has or is beginning to mature, we have lost all those idiotic sites that have been mentioned in the article, e.g. "Goldfish cam", "Cofee Pot cam", and so forth. The web used to be a place where novices from all over the world would put something up and say "hey look! I made a web page!", without the slightest care of its content. Hell, I must have put up 5 different sites in the last few years just because it was cool to make and send to friends. But, I haven't touched html or the like in the last year. Mainly because I really have nothing worthwhile to put up (except some baby pics). Gone are the days of cruising the web just to find the "cool site of the day". Today the majority of internet use has some purpose - news, research, porn,....not necessarily in that order.
Perhaps you're just busted for being stupid.
In the good ol' days of the web I could chew up hours looking around for what I wanted ("web browser" is an apt name for that style of searching). Today, I just go to portals that usually link to content I'm interested in, and spend more time reading content instead of looking for it.
--All your stolen base are belong to Rickey Henderson
still manage to dig up weird stuff and still entertain after all these years!
Contrary to the opinion of some, I don't think that some day way back when there was meaningful content on the web. There's always the gems but they are usually floating in a sea of crap. Out of 100 websites on just about any subject there were a couple with anything at all meaningful and the rest just copied .gif files from the meaningful sites and always said "Welcome to..." on their damn home page.
While lack of good content is probably a signifigant factor in making people use the web less it is a factor that has always been present. It isn't like suddenly all the web content disappeared or something. It has never realy been there in spades. The dot com fallout has made it difficult to provide any content on the web without beating the shit out of viewers with advertisement enshrouded baseball bats. Where you used to be able to look at some dorky homepage with pictures of someone's cats with relative ease, now hosts want you to oogle at flashing ads that promote epilepsy and are just a plain practice of advertising jackassery. I'm not going to bother looking at a page requiring me to jump through hoops, I don't have that sort of attention span.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
I loved this topic so I thought I would bring it up with my wife....Who although a technophobe, discovered the web and email a few years back -- and learned to use search engines and email clients. I noticed that her use is down a bunch in the last year, so I asked her why --- and it boiled down to the constant bombardment from companies splattering flashy ads and countless popups in her face.....And her amount of Spam easily hides any legitimate emails that might creep through. She says she is tired digging through 40 junk emails to find the 1 email from her sister. I myself have countered the effect fairly well by using procmail filters and the new features of decent browsers that let you turn off popups. But you can't expect your casual, non tech user to take all of these steps. (Yet these people still get annoyed with spam, in your face flashing ads, and popups flying all over their desktops...)
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
Much as I hate to admit it, I've been using the 'web for a looooong time, as you can probably tell from my low UID here. :P
/., a couple news pages, get some patches, then check up on some friends, and I'm done for the day. I've stayed away from USENET ever since The September That Never Ended. Pretty much the only reason I still have broadband is because of three things:
There's not much more out there I'm interested in online any more. Back when I had a 14.4 dialup line, I was all over USENET, but these days, I hit
1) Speed of software downloads
2) Ping times for games (I'm a bit of a Day of Defeat junkie)
3) Always on convenience.
Something I have noticed is that as the speed of my connection has increased, my interest in the web has decreased.
InThane
It would be interesting to see how long the average Internet session for /.ers is, since a good portion of us are online for work related reasons.
CBDTPA. Senator Hollings was right.
There were two kinds of people in the beginning. Free Net brothers and sisters... and Bill Gates. Bill said, rather like any business wog might:"Hey! Don't give all that away for free. Make people pay for it"!
I mean, you turned the Internet into something as interesting as... TV.
Congradulations you greedy morons.
to porn that is. Things end faster.
I remember checking Zdnet and News/Cnet every day for the latest on new internet startups, newest hardware, etc. Now, there are hardly any new articles on Zdnet or CNET. It seems as though those sites are just links to buy hardware/software.
/. and palminfocenter.com are the only sites I check on a daily basis.
Truthfully, Cnn,
[palminfocenter = I'm waiting for an all in one pda/phone/mp3 player]
Live web cams
It's quite possible that the folks present in the initial surge of Internet adoption have learned to be more efficient too. :)
Not to mention that the median age group has had a lot more computer training at school now than a decade ago.
The bigger portals (Yahoo etc.) are better designed now and more widely known as well.
Lots of possible explanations for a whopping 7-minute reduction!
According to the Center for Media Education, American kids watch, on average, 28 hours of TV per week.
I cannot quote the source, but the number is only slightly less (20-24 hours) for adults who watch TV.
... there's only so much porn you can download before your hard drive gets full...
Maybe we spend more time on the Web not because it is more mature, but we are more mature. In the early days I spent too much time looking at personal sites, reading comics, and watching fish cams. It took away from my other activities and left me with an icky "Dorito syndrome" feeling after a too-long session. Now I read just a few sites daily plus what's recommended to me by people I respect. And it's balanced by more time painting and programming, both of which get published to the Web. So my time spent online has gone down, but the quality of my contribution has gone up!
AlpineR
1. Web sites are becoming more and more offensive. I recently visited a site that wouldn't display properly in Opera so I used IE. Unfortunately, IE lacks Opera's ability to block pop-up windows, and I was so bombarded with pop-ups that it was impossible to find the information I was looking for.
2. Search engines are all but useless. Type in any word or phrase and you get pr0n sites.
3. Your e-mail in-box is constantly flooded with spam.
4. The most popular Internet activities are message boards, instant messaging, chat rooms and e-mail. In other words, a high tech equivalent of the CB radio. Like the CB radio, the fad is passing.
5. Other than plain text and simple HTML, the Internet is worthless as a vehicle for delivering content. Which actually doesn't matter since most web sites have no content worth seeing.
Your music is all good and well, but now is the time for all good men to, well, come up with some zany, off-the-wall content. Save us! Save us!
I never paid a lot of attention to "The Cool Site of the Day", but if I wanted a substitute I might go over here: Infinite Matrix, where you'll find people like Bruce Sterling writing web log entries pointing at neat stuff they've come across: Schism Matrix.
So there are fewer stupid novelty sites on the web. Is that supposed to be something to be upset about?
Well, duh. That's supposed to be a *bad* sign? It's a great sign that (a) some totally mindless companies best thought of as venture capital backed stock scams and (b) some scuzzy domain name speculators have faded from the scene. Well, duh. Memo to web designers: put away your toys and do your job.Memo to NYT authors: when stuck for a story idea, you can always go for the "Is _____ Dead?" formula. Run a bunch of random comments slanted to make it sound like something's going wrong, then you can "provide balance" by running a bunch of quotes saying that it isn't really going wrong.
Back in the gold rush years, I think the majority of people were excited about the net because they could be heard.
Everyone has their own individual interests and expertise and they wanted to share them with the world.
The net made it easy. Sometimes it was just a "my home page" or "here's a picture of my girlfriend" (remember those?) or cars, or other hobbies like favorite band lyrics.
But a lot of people are well versed in certain subjects and they could now share this knowledge with an affordable accessibility that print and the airwaves didn't provide.
Then came the lawyers and the media and corporate IP money to back them up.
The law firms could hire cheap help to comb AltaVista for their client's keywords.
The law firm shows the giant list to the client, they get paid a bundle for easy work and out went the cease and desist letters.
This killed 90% of the personal interest websites.
These days, if you search for something, all you'll get back are offers to sell you what you probably already have.
In the gold rush days, you would actually get back somebody's personal opinion, insight or opinion. It was great, and that also fostered the desire to give back your contribution to the collective. Heady times and the possibility to be heard, to matter, to exist.
In about 8 years, greed has killed it all off almost completely. Now with Google, it's 2 billion channels with nothing on. That and spam.
It's a shame too. I don't think we'll ever have that chance again.
Anyone that has been on the net for more than a year. Especialy those have been online for 6+ years can really tell you... it used to be fun and all kinds of crazy fun stuff all over. but now its all corprate and cost. the fun sites are few and far between compared to how it was years a go. Anyone else rember these days? when there were almost as many personal sits as company sites. and the personal sites were fun stuff not here is my resume and contact info.
The only reason i can think of as to why 'internet sessions' are shorter is because the ISPs are going broke and or becoming extremely unreliable and not really caring about their customers...
you know who you are.......
NTL
0xC3
No, but i have wondered why we dont replace most of the staff with a cron task... though possibly we might need some robotics to do the lifting work.
0xC3
I was mostly on minna, but I met my (now ex) wife on a plato system at the University of Nebraska in the early 1980s.... I wonder how many plato systems there were in the world.
SPF support for most open source mail servers can be found at libspf2.
There are few people willing to wage the fight to present interesting content. Those that hold the keys to access are either owned by hollywood or are interested in making a buck off your ideas more than entertaining and sharing. If you are lucky or smart enough to get around that ass pain, then most people won't be able to look at your more interesting content anyway because M$ will break anything but the latest activeX crap. So why bother? Let all the greedheads suffer in their lack of creativity.
Sorry, but I'm keeping my little ftp site quiet and among friends. I'd like to share more, but I'd be shut down fast by the same dumb ass company that gave me a user name with an @, at, character in the midle of the username and who's tech told me I should use Outlook because Mozilla was "internet unfriendly"!
"Broadband" as presented by the senator from Disney will push more crap at you and further destroy the web.
Have a nice day, folks.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
While I personally spend more time on the web (combo of having more work-related things to do online and not having to worry about tying up my phone line since I got DSL), I think some people spend less time online because some dotcoms that they actually used have since died. I used both kozmo and urbanfetch (still get a little nostalgic whenever i see one of their former deliverymen riding their bike around with their company messenger bags). believe it or not, some people actually did use petopia and the like. maybe their spending those seven minutes actually (gasp!) going to a store in person.
"I can't understand why people are frightened by new ideas. I'm frightened of old ones."
What bothers me about the net today is not that people want to get off it, but that everybody wants to get on it, and leave their mark. I saw this with my sister too. It's not that my sister isn't intelligent, because she is. But the way she went was "I want to have my own site. What should I put on it?". Which eventually led to yet another rather boring site. It should be the other way around, like it used to be.
Also, the focus on adding gizmo's to your site means the pressure on adding content has gone down. Back in the 1993-1997 timeframe you simply couldn't add gizmo's because the few things to add either required technical excellence, or a really fast internet connection (which back then was still reserved for the happy few).
But I agree with the basic tenet here. The average website quality has gone down to a point where it's no longer sustainable to go surfing (following links at random, the way the web was supposed to work). I just don't do it anymore. It's not that the number of good sites has gone down. It's that the number of crappy sites has risen so dramatically. The way I use the web now is by typing something into google and clicking the search results. And going to the regulars ofcourse...
One of the primary reasons people started using the net was that the information there, compared to, say, what could be found in a library, was easy and quick to find, and the information was to the point. Now the web has filled with masses of rubbish from websites trying to make money, our time is being taken up more and more finding what we want amongst the quagmire of crap. One doesn't have to wonder why websites like Google have become so popular (not to mention Web Pages That Suck). People aren't surfing as much any more, they have already found the sites they like and are sticking to them.
What is the point of the internet?
The early adopters of the web were the intellengsia, and they make good use of it. Now in the the USA that it has reached a majority of 50%, you are now including the people who barely make use of it. You've pretty much gotten more than all of the truely literate people in the country already.
Surely people's web browsing sessions are getting shorter because they've read most of it by now.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
I recently got a cable modem so maybe I've contributed to making the web look less interesting. Sorry fellow surfers!
A faster modem has allowed me to surf _more_ in _less_ time.
With high speed internet it dose not take as long to download porn that is why the time is going down, when 60% of the people are on the web with sometype of high speed internet the avg. time will be 45 mins. you will all see soon