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The Rise of the Junkweb and Why It's So Awesome

Posted by samzenpus on from the lowest-common-denominator dept.

Hugh Pickens writes writes "Have you noticed your Facebook stream or looked at reddit lately? A huge chunk of what goes by lately are photos with text over them, usually quotes about this or that. 'It's the Junkweb,' writes Chris Brogan. 'Why "junk?" Because the original intent of the Internet was that links were gold, that searchability was key, that this ability to find anything and use resources from wherever was magic. And this new web? The web of pictures with text over them? They're junk. They're a dead end. The picture is the payload.' Facebook and Pinterest are doing what so much of our 'awesome' tech hasn't been able to do well: let the everyperson into this universe. For whatever reason, the 'photos with text' experience gives us that feeling we get when we read magazines. 'It makes the texty text of blogging a lot less stark. It draws our eyes in. It's fast to consume, and it brings an emotional response faster.' Now with the release of Google's Panda search technology, it has been acknowledged that links and pages aren't everything and with Google+ goes the realization that it's no longer a links-only world. who shares is as important as how it's shared. 'I'm spending far more time on the Junkweb than I am on the Smartweb,' concludes Brogan. 'Deny it, if you want. The numbers show otherwise. We are in love with this new method of interacting.'"

5 of 181 comments (clear)

  1. "We are in love with this..."? by Cornwallis · · Score: 3, Informative

    Speak for yourself. Reminds me of how TV dumbed us down. Thanks for making it sound so important.

    1. Re:"We are in love with this..."? by Half-pint+HAL · · Score: 2, Informative

      "Junk DNA" is a myth. Some idiot decided that just because he didn't know what it did, that it must do nothing. Now go away and learn some science.

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      Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
  2. It's just a Facebook bug by michaelmalak · · Score: 3, Informative

    Get over it. It's just a Facebook use-case bug. When you click "share" to share an image, the poster's comments don't get shared with it, so the only way to caption an image is to photoshop the text directly onto the image.

  3. Re:It's ugly by ReallyEvilCanine · · Score: 4, Informative

    Horseshit.
    Almost all of that ASCII art was done decades before by the RTTY radio geeks, and most of the best stuff was porn.
    .
    So yes, it can be traced back to geeks, but a lot further back than you seem to know about, you young whipper-snapper.

  4. Re:It's ugly by ukemike · · Score: 3, Informative

    Google failed me. I googled for "2002 concorde temperatre control schematics" and not a single result ha dthe word "schematics" in it. I was horrified that advanced search is GONE now, and "+schematics" still didn't return anything with that word.

    Perhaps if you tried "2002 concorde temperature control wiring diagram" you might get better results. Sorry but google is an american company, chrysler is an american car company you'll get better results if you use american words and spelling. Using search engines well is a skill.

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    -- QED