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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.
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...
I'm sure I've shaved off 7 minutes of online time by just having a faster connection...
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.
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."
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
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
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.
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)
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.
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.
...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.
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.
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;}
Have you noticed how even the once most respected sites has started pushing pop ups and pop overs to try and sell you a credit card, etc??? Makes me surf less for SURE!
Nick
Encryption: I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend your right to encrypt it...
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 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 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.
I think that the content is still there. Just much harder to find because all of it is diluted in porn and ads. I'd guess that 50% of the content on the Net is smut anymore.
Oh I miss the days of typing in what you want to find in a search engine and getting a list of what you want vs the top 100 hits being about how to get off.
I know - these advertisments get on my nerves, I can
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hardly stand to surf anymore. Even the largest mainstream sites out there are pushing pop-up content
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down your throat. It may have something to do with all of these high speed connections that everyone has.
My thoughts.
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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.