Web Surfing Losing Its Luster 328
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.
Advertisements! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Advertisements! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Advertisements! (Score:4, Insightful)
Nick
entertainment? (Score:2, Insightful)
i REALLY hope my online session times start to decrease, productivity needs to increase
Re:entertainment? (Score:4, Interesting)
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! [campchaos.com] so many times...
Of course, here I am on Slashdot and it's workin' time.
BFAs (Score:2, Insightful)
Reasons for the decline cited in the article include: commercialization, lack of compelling content, instant messaging, P2P...
Big Fucking Ads...
Re:BFAs (Score:2, Informative)
Is it just a coincidence (Score:2)
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?
Trolling? (Score:2, Funny)
It seems that there are still plenty of trolls on Slashdot who still think it's as fun as ever.
Re:Trolling? (Score:2)
You'd think they'd be skilled at it right now. Just like Hollywood, they keep rehashing the same old stuff over and over again.
Re:Trolling? (Score:3, Funny)
That's NOT TRUE! IF I EVER MEET YOU, I WILL KICK YOUR ASS!
Lol that wasn't flamebait!! (Score:2)
Somebody's trigger finger is itchy today!!
Could somebody mod him back up again? He was illustrating my point.
Broadband (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Broadband (Score:5, Funny)
Those extra 7 minutes were then spent downloading larger banner ads.
Re:Broadband (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Broadband (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Broadband (Score:3, Insightful)
When I surf - I'm doing either one of two things. Either I'm looking for something specific (in which case, the fact that Google and Broadband make the task much more quick is not insignificant) - OR, I'm just aimlessly surfing. But if I have to go to work, or something, then I won't spend as much time aimlessly surfing.
Recession=on average, less money for more work for a given person; either that person has lost their job and is working another job or two at reduced salary, or that person narrowly escaped a RIF (Reduction In Force) or fears one, so that person is working harder to avoid being in the bottom 10%. Hence, they're not aimlessly surfing as much.
Re:Broadband (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Broadband (Score:3, Interesting)
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).
Re:Broadband (Score:2, Informative)
( More relevant information ) / (Less Time) = Greater Productivity
When Greenspan talks about IT adding effieciency to our economy this one of the results.
Stephen
Re:Broadband (Score:2, Insightful)
Whenever my family needs to know some odd little factoid, look up some news quickly or the like, it's also my job to go find it - it's all becoming so much quicker. Yesterday my mother wondered what whalemeat tasted like, and I could tell her within minutes that about a dozen people online said it was much like beef. 3 years ago I'd be lucky to find that information online within 20 minutes, if it were even there.
The net might be getting more passe, but in ways it's a lot more efficient. Blame google!
Re:Broadband (Score:2, Funny)
That is pretty cool.
Re:Broadband (Score:2, Interesting)
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.)
Re:Broadband (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Broadband (Score:2)
Re:Broadband (Score:3, Interesting)
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!
Ad size... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Ad size... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Ad size... (Score:2, Funny)
Try driving down the road with one of those things flashing in your windshield.
Re:Ad size... (Score:2)
1. Install
2. Go to Edit->Preferences...
3. Choose Privacy & Security->Images
4. Animated images should loop: Once or Never
Personally, I leave mine set on "Once" because sometimes I hit pages with animated images I want to see move (once). This won't stop Flash ads (but you can just kill the Flash plugin to get those).
Re:Ad size... (Score:2)
Re:If Large ads bother you.... (Score:2)
Its on yahoo as well (Score:3, Informative)
Yahoo link [yahoo.com]
Broadband? (Score:2)
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...
Re:Broadband? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Broadband? (Score:2)
I screwed up by naming Broadband as "the" hidden variable. There are many others pointed out by other posters: the general climb up the learning curve, better search engines [google.com], content attrition/duplication, and--probably most significant--the newness is wearing off. Our love affair with the web is waning. Even slashdot is losing its appeal to me. Perhaps I shall become...gasp...a dreaded troll.
Time spent online (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Time spent online (Score:2, Insightful)
Not a fucking argument here (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Bye Bye 14 hour sessions... (Score:3, Interesting)
Goodbye 14 hour telnet bbs/mud sessions, I won't miss you.
I've surfed it all! (Score:3, Funny)
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.
Re:I've surfed it all! (Score:5, Funny)
Just Decades Ago (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Part of a normal process... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
My Online Time slice by slice (Score:3, Interesting)
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...
Re:My Online Time slice by slice (Score:2)
Intelligence. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Intelligence. (Score:2)
Webpages are just handy things to put stuff like manuals and download support sites. FTP is for real downloads, and anything else is just eye candy marketing claptrap.
Hear hear to you sir.
* it helps that I have had a PC at home since I can remember, with configs like an 8086 based Ericsson PC with 128Kb Ram (yes, Kb) and one 5 1/4" disk storing 320Kb.
Re:Intelligence. (Score:2)
;~)
Just couldn't resist.
Re:Intelligence. (Score:2)
Yeah. Why bother. We should erect separate walls to keep out the less intelligent and "us". An application of citizenship should ask for your slashdot username.
Your post is a direct contradiction of the ideas the Internet was founded on; open protocols, communication, and indiscriminate access. This affords with it a lot of junk, in fact the very definition of indiscriminate is haphazard. But that same feature also lets us make available that rare gem once in awhile.
Sure, everyone and their Grandma can create a web site with FrontPage, but shouldn't that be something celebrated? Would you rather force people to submit to intelligence tests before being able to publish on and over an open, universal medium? People will always follow a bell curve, and the Internet will do (has done) the same.
The fact web usage is on the decline is not news. When a new trend emerges, a lot of people flock to it, if only to try it at first. Naturally, human activities don't follow Moore's law. This report is like saying "Going to the park is down 10%.". That doesn't mean we can inference parks in jeopardy of being destroyed or city funding will decrease. It simply means people aren't robots and are doing something else for a change.
It's just a natural trend in human activity: people are dynamic and don't like doing the same thing all the time. There are new trends, new fads which initially attract a lot of attention and interest, and then gradually level out to fit in usage.
As an example, movies were a big hit in the early 1930's and 40's, with most people spending large amounts of time at first. Then, they leveled off as cinemascope was being introduced. Today, they have secured their own position next to other activities like TV, reading, etc.
The Internet will do the same. I think a lot of people are surprised at how it is entering the commodity stage rather quickly (however as history shows things that enter the commodity stage quickly have the longest history).
I would reexamine your policies on The Internet in general. Just because there are people out there that are not as smart as you (or so you think, HTML IMO should not be used as a method to determine intelligence) you shouldn't scoff at them with disregard for their right of access.
Re:Intelligence. (Score:2)
I never made any statments about requiring intelligence tests to access the Internet, yet you seem to have read somewhere that I had; and that, furthermore, you make the assertion that I scoff at people possessing limited HTML skills, which is also false.
I *do* scoff at high-school graduates that are incapable of even the most basic tasks, who write like third-graders, and who interpret every bit of positive criticism that they get as a grave insult. But I digress.
Erm, "the ideas the Internet was founded upon"? I don't suppose you've ever heard of ARPANET at all? If we were all online for the original purpose that the Internet was founded for, than we'd have names beginning with 'Colonel' and 'Lieutenant'.
If you look at the underpinnings of the 'modern' Internet, you'd see that it was created and used largely for- and by- academic institutions (after the split with the military). Freedom of information was one of the ideals of this emerging Internet, but it came with the understanding that the information one distributed should be, for the most part, relevant, interesting to others, or important.
This quasi-utopian state continuted up until AOL released its moron horde onto the Internet, which promptly swamped the long-term net users (who were, for the most part, both polite and literate) in a massive river of digital sewage. Instead of the Internet acting to help enrich the minds of its users, it began serving as a type of mental bog -- much like television is today. The "intent" of the internet wasn't to provide a voice for every immature, uneducated, ignorant individual on the planet; it was a means of communication for the people who cared about using their minds.
It's obvious that we can't turn back the clock; Pandora has opened the proverbial box, and the once-pristine world of the Internet was in an instant infested with a type of informational disease. But we can think back to the "old days", and try to build Internet communites with higher standards in the future; ones like ASR, K5, and (formerly) Slashdot. Places where people can go, not just to be entertained, but to expand their minds.
Gopher? (Score:3)
All the good useless information is dying (Score:2, Insightful)
measuring online sessions (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm sure... (Score:2)
Internet/Web != TV (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Internet/Web != TV (Score:2)
I totally see your point, and I do much of the same with my own net connection, but I still think my online time directly impacts the time I'd otherwise spend watching TV.
Maybe that's because when I watch TV, I expect some of the same things I get from web surfing/research. Channels like TLC, TechTV, or Discovery catch my interest when they have something interesting to say... something that teaches me something new.
I never watch garbage like sitcoms. I don't find them all that funny. (If I want comedy, I'd rather watch stand-up and get a more pure form.)
Whether I sit down and watch some TV or I sit down at the PC to web-surf, I have the same goals; entertain me with some useful information about topics I'm interested in.
NYT "Circuits" Section Getting Crappier Than Ever (Score:2)
Hey NYT, if you're reading: stick a fork in it.
It's not just ads (Score:2, Insightful)
Trolling the web? (Score:3, Insightful)
P2P, IM, online gaming... Instead of 'Trolling the web' looking for something to do, people have actually FOUND something to do..
It's also number of websites visited (Score:2, Informative)
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.
Correct, it's not as fun. (Score:2)
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.
Porn.. (Score:3, Funny)
Sorry guys, didn't mean to throw the curve.
My list of possible causes (Score:2)
The decreasing time people spend online could be the result of:
Addictive? Is it a narcotic? (Score:2)
Re:Addictive? Is it a narcotic? (Score:2)
what?? (Score:2, Funny)
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....
one word: blogs (Score:2)
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 [kisrael.com] gets an infusion from outside sources like Usenet) that over all things don't get too stale.
stepping up the curve (Score:2)
"Re-purposing" the web... (Score:4, Insightful)
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 [davidlynch.com]. 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.
Internet--TV (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
This is good (Score:2, Funny)
Re:This is good (Score:2)
I [umc-cares.org] see [div17.org] what [threeblinddates.com] you [about.com] mean. [entheogen.com]
It's the content, stupid... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It's the content, stupid... (Score:2)
blah, blah, blah. There is a ton of interesting content, and more being produced all the time. Enough to support an entire web genre of link-centric blogs like this one [memepool.com] and that one [boingboing.net].
Absolutely true... (Score:2)
commercializtion of the web... (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
hardy har har (Score:2)
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 $500.00), etc., then you WILL FAIL. How and why are these people still trying so hard to use this out-dated crap model? You wanna know why the web is not being surfed as much?
PEOPLE ARE SICK OF THE BULLSHIT that goes along with trying to get info.
Funny, I thought it was getting BETTER (Score:3, Interesting)
Okay, we all hate ads. Animated banner ads are a shameless attempt to burn a little ad-shaped hole in your brain, dumping their talentless, artless ad copy right down your optic nerve and into your delicate brain. But let's face it, a lot of websites which could not ordinarily afford to exist are paid for in this manner.
Also, for those who remember the web before search engines, you know, in that supposed golden age, you couldn't FIND anything. I mean, it usually looked like there wasn't that much content out there, but I doubt that was ever true, at least once the universities started taking it seriously, well ahead of everyone else. You could have a good time browsing around, but if you wanted information on a specific topic you had to get lucky, or follow an awful lot of links.
Let's especially not forget the fact that google caches things, so as long as people put their information in ordinary HTML (A trend which is becoming less and less common these days) google will hang onto the data for some time, making the web more persistent.
Sure, commercialization hurts, but someone has to pay for all this bandwidth, all these sites, the hosting... Suck it up. Enjoy the fact that all you have to pay for is your connection. It's worth remembering that access outside of a university or corporation used to be hellishly expensive. Compu$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 [everything2.com] which can keep you busy for many hours if you're possessed of the necessary pedanticism. Hell, even livejournal [livejournal.com] 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 [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 [circus.com] where I lived - And we had a Class C from scruz.net [scruz.net] at the time. :)
Those numbers are meaningless. (Score:2)
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
Google and work connections (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
The phases of a fad: (Score:2)
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.
Change in 'net topography as well as netizens (Score:2)
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.
Broadband (Score:2)
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.
I have changed more than the web has (Score:2)
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
$cha-ching$$ (Score:2)
I knew it.... (Score:3, Interesting)
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
Troll doll (Score:4, Funny)
Sure, but trolling Slashdot is still a well-respected pastime.
I've started contributing (Score:2)
Where are those punks at Jupiter when you need... (Score:2)
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...
Re:Where are those punks at Jupiter when you need. (Score:2)
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.
Long Long Time Ago... (and it IS long...) (Score:4, Interesting)
Its the *ds (Score:4, Insightful)
stating the obvious: there *is* still good stuff (Score:3, Informative)
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 [infinitematrix.net], where you'll find people like Bruce Sterling writing web log entries pointing at neat stuff they've come across: Schism Matrix [infinitematrix.net].
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.
Re:I protest (Score:2)
Even TV requires less interaction, I can walk into and out of the living room, and still keep up on whats going on in whatever I happen to be watching.
The "net" has is losing its "new car smell" as it were. People are relizing most people have nothing interesting to say, and quite frankly, don't need to see a picture of yet another cat.
I would suspect, most people, like to get up and do things with there life.
Re:I protest (Score:3, Informative)
Hardly a slow day for news.
Re:My Reasons Include: (Score:2)
It drives me nuts dude. I thought that by now every website would be using Passport or Sun's Liberty. But nah, you have to register with hundreds of websites, come back a month later and you've already forgotten your username/password so you have to register yet again, and finally you give up.
Oh yes, the Flash stuff drive me nuts and it's pretty confusing.
Re:88 minutes? - should have been 83minutes (Score:2)
Surveys.
Re:One word... (Score:2)
Re:One word... (Score:2)