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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 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.
I can virtually guarantee this is the reason, coupled with the fact that people are now able to find things *signifigantly* faster than before. Think about the level of difficulty you had finding and accessing content a few years ago, compared to our broadband, post-google era.. People need to surf for shorter periods of time to accomplish the same tasks.
In essence, it is that the web is now more efficient than it was a few years ago.
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
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.
not nearly enough people have broadband to impact the figure that large. /. from my dial up connection any more.
Plus, its a prett specious(sp) argument ayways.
How many people sit down and go "I'm going to surf until I download X amount of data, then quit?
I had broadband, I surfed more. There are all kinds of things I won't even attempt with dial-up. Its too damn slow, and advertising kills my speed. I won't even go to
Well for years I was saying need faster connect, from 2400, to 9600, to14.4m to 28, then 56. well the universe gets a little laugh now that I have 56K, but web site take even longer to download do to bad programing and advertisment. mostly bad programing.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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.
Back in the dark ages when I was trying to convince my (then) employer that we needed to be online, the primary management objection was loss of productivity. I told them that yes, there would be a period where people got addicted to surfing and that there would be a temporary drop, but that it lost it's allure pretty quickly and that the overall benefits of quick access to information would outweigh the time lost to surfing.
They were also worried about their liability from employees downloading pr0n on company machines. I advised them to treat it like any other policy violation. Ultimately, they decided to wait.
Two years later I was talking to the CEO (I had already left the company) who told me they were finally getting everyone online and that what I told them had turned out to be accurate.
The web is like any cool toy - most people will get addicted to it for a brief period of time, then the attraction tapers off. The useful parts stay useful and, for most people, the fluff loses it's attraction. You can only watch Napster BAD! so many times...
Of course, here I am on Slashdot and it's workin' time.
Slashdot comments... splitting hairs since 1997.
I'm sure if I had broadband, my surfing would go up, but after a while it would peak and drop off. One thing to keep in mind, national or world events can be a very large draw, when it's first reported and as follow-up articles continue and readers do a little research to satisfy curiousity (i.e. where's Khandahar, have they found bin Laden yet, etc.)
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
One possibility not mentioned in the article is that newcomers to the web might not spend as much time as the die-hards. I bet if you did a study on the average IQ on the web, you'd find that went down as it has gotten older, as well. =)
The invention of Google must surely have a lot to do with reducing the time people waste on the net.
Lord knows it took freakin' forever to find things back in the days of Archie and Gopher! Yahoo was just terrific... until it became impossible to catalog all web sites by hand.
There was a while there when we were all relying on crappy HotBot and Altavista and the like, spending ages trying to figure out just the "right" search term to find what we wanted.
Thank goodness for Google. Damn, I love those folk! I think I'll name my children after them.
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
Think about the level of difficulty you had finding and accessing content a few years ago, compared to our broadband, post-google era..
That was my initial thought as well (when I heard this statistic about a year ago when it was actually current). However the statistic shows a 7 minute drop over a one year period. (march 2000: 90 minutes, march 2001: 83 minutes) Both google and broadband were widly avalable in march 2000. Although increased bandwidth over one year may account for some of it, I do believe that there was really a drop. I don't, however, believe that it makes a big difference to anyone.
Ambition is a poor excuse for not having enough sense to be lazy.
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.'"
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!!
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
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.
No - look at www.memepool.com. Look at the history. A year, two years ago, we'd see 10, 15 submissions, weird shit, web sites to go to every day. Now it's like 3-5 at best.
There is definately a decline in the amount of interesting places to go. I'm not talking about big organized established sites like news sites or software develepment sites. I'm talking about the quirky "too-much-time-on-their-hands" stuff that is interesting to check out when you're aimlessly surfing.
This decline may have something to do with maturity, again. Maybe a larger percentage of people no longer have too much time on their hands. Maybe all the neat weird quirky stuff has been done.
Or maybe it's getting harder and more expensive to host things, and these trivial sites are disappearing off the net as ISPs continue to raise the bar. (by increasing fees, increasing restrictions, all as a result of consolidation, less competition).
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
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
What do you mean? You can't have broadband yet! Don't you know that "The lack of high quality digital content continues to hinder consumer adoption of broadband Internet service"? Or that "The secure protection of digital content is a necessary precondition to the dissemination, and on-line availability, of high quality digital content, which will benefit consumers and lead to the rapid growth of broadband networks"?
Because the CBDTPA hasn't been passed yet, there's no way you could have broadband. Nice try. It's obvious that you are surfing less because there's no high quality digital Disney Approved Content on the web for you!
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.