Category Archives: Communications, Connection, Internet, Web, Media

Yahoo!, AltaVista, and now Google

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Yahoo!, how we loved you so?

You had a directory whose quality was unquestionable.

You had pages that were quicker then quick, light and fast.

You had the greatest geek mindshare, bar none.

When people asked – how do I find [this] on the web? We confidently answered, “Yahoo!”.

Then you decided to grow your business. AltaVista came and kicked your ass.

AltaVista, how we loved you so?

You had search results that were more accurate then your competitors.

You had pages that were quicker then quick, light and fast.

You took over the greatest geek mindshare, bar none.

When people asked – how do I find [this] on the web? We confidently answered, “AltaVista”.

Then you decided to grow your business. Google came and kicked your ass.

Google, by purchasing Pyra Labs (Blogger if you live in a cave) is now trodding down a predictable path. Will it make the same mistakes?

People forget how much power Yahoo! had over the web in it’s early days. As Google decides to grow it’s business – I’m going on the lookout for who is going to dethrone it. Look for it to happen in one to three years. Like to make a bet?

Isn’t this good for weblogging you ask? Initially, yes. Congrats to he Pyra folk who have been providing a valuable service to so many webloggers and readers. The service will definately be strengthened with Google’s resources behind it. I fear that eventually however, when companies control both the pipe (in this case the search engine) and what goes thru it (weblogs are found more by search engines then by other weblogs, contrary to belief) – it is only good for one entity – the company itself.

Usenet newsgroups are just growing by leaps and bounds aren’t they? Shelley is on target to remind us of Google buying Deja News.

Do people forget how great Geocities once was? eGroups? What makes Google so different from early Yahoo!?! Nothing! The same spirit that drove Yahoo! back in the day drives Google now. Yahoo! kicked ass. The geeks rallied behind it. Now it is a successful business. Good for Yahoo!. The pioneers however, moved on and promoted the upstart. Google has been kicking ass. The geeks have been rallying behind it. Soon it will be a large, successful business. And soon, a new generation of geeks will move on – eventually taking the web with them – to the new upstart.

Are developers programmers or engineers?

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An interesting InfoWorld story on project management. Quotes:

…”The act of constructing software is, in fact, not an engineering process,” Cooper said. “Engineering to me is problem-solving, which is very different from solution implementations, which is what programmers [do].” Title inflation is endemic to the industry, he said. “Web designers are called programmers, programmers are called engineers, and engineers are called architects, and architects don’t seem to ever get called,” Cooper exclaimed.

…Software, said Cooper, is dominated by people who like to create things as opposed to those who like to serve other people.

via Dane Carlson.

Speaking of serving a need, MeanDean blogs about e-Sword free bible study software. Looks interesting.

Is Net Surfing A Dying Sport?

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… “People are treating the Web like a library and going to the card catalog rather than searching through all the books,”

…”After a while you get tired of flipping through the channels and just turn to the programs you like,” he said.

Read the rest over at Yahoo!.

Semi-related: Clay Shirky’s Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality, Dave Winer’s and Shelley Powers’s. responses. Shelley’s post is home to a great conversation and I highly recommend it. Jason Kottke adds some good linkage as well.

Birds of a feather flock virtually together, that’s what I always say 🙂

In the end, I think Mark Pilgrim says it best, “All the friendships I?ve developed in the past 2 years?starting long before I was in the Technorati Top 10?grew out of connections I made through writing this weblog and reading others. This month I?ll get 1 million hits on my weblog, and have lunch with 10 friends I met through my weblog. Guess which I care about more.”

Well damn straight.

Chloe in a related BlogRoots thread says,

“What I wonder is why this is being treated as “news”…I’ve noticed this pattern in society from the time I started pre-school.”

Yep, she’s absolutely right. This isn’t news. It’s the same old news. In fact – I wrote a piece, some may recall, a long, long, long time ago, about the power of the link and how some weblogs actually wield more “power” then others. This is old news. If I posted about it – it must be old news!

Information technology usually doesn’t change what we do – just how we do it.

A question though – without idealists like Shelley and Dave (even if they are in the top 20) – would we end up with, instead of an 80/20 “power” (we need a better word) distribution, a 95/5? Think about it. And the play goes on…

Update: They are having a good debate at Slashdot on the Clay Shirky piece.

A Nation of Voyeurs

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What does how we use Google say about us?

Speaking of big shifts going on…

“The demographic trends do not favor one-size-fits-all news products,” said Peter Francese, founder of American Demographics magazine, which tracks population changes. “There isn’t one community to serve. It’s gone. … It’s now a matter of serving niches rather than trying to be all things to all people,” he said.

Read the rest in Why Won’t Johnny Read?.

“the Internet is counterproductive to peace”

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Hey it’s not me, it’s John Perry Barlow saying that in a recent interview. He precedes this by saying, “There are a million virtual streetcorners with a million lonely pamphleteers on them, all of them decrying the war and not actually coming together in any organized fashion to oppose it. It strikes me that existing political institutions — whether it’s the administration or Congress or large corporations — only respond to other institutions. I don’t care how many individuals you have marching in the streets, they’re not going to pay attention until there’s a leader for those individuals who can come forward and say I represent the organization of those individuals and we’re going to amass the necessary money and votes to kick you the hell out of office. Then they pay attention. But not until. And so right at the moment it would strike me that the Internet is counterproductive to peace.”

Wow! Great quote!

John Perry Barlow, if you are not familiar with him, is co-founder of the Internet-legendary Electronic Frontier Foundation and a former songwriter for the Grateful Dead.

The interviewer says he’s shocked that Barlow would say this. He should read David Shenk’s 1998 classic, “Data Smog”. Time to read Bowling Alone. I’ve been putting it off for a little too long.

Update: Some Slashdotters take it personal while at MetaFilter they argue themselves into a circle.

Will there be a mass movement to utilize tools like MoveOn.org or will the prevailing me-too trend continue where individuals refuse to come together and decide to create their own competing efforts? Everyone shouting the same things – but seperate from each other. Barlow says there needs to be a leader to represent an institution. What I think he fails to see is that we’ve been taught not to trust leaders, even from amoungst us. Leaders fail and leaders fall. So do institutions. So we go our own way and trust in only ourselves. You can’t attribute that to the Internet. It’s the way our generation thinks. Decentralized. Individualized. The Internet is an expression of that. A multitude of choice and the freedom to us it.

The demographic trends do not favor one-size-fits-all news products,” said Peter Francese, founder of American Demographics magazine, which tracks population changes. “There isn’t one community to serve. It’s gone. … It’s now a matter of serving niches rather than trying to be all things to all people,” he said.

That’s from an article about 18-34 year olds rejecting traditional media and switching to the Internet for their news. The same trend has taken place in TV and Music. More choices. Smaller audiences. Less and less shared experience and information. It’s all out there – but it’s up to you to find it or the martketers to find you and lead you to it.