When I first started reading stuff like this on the web, there was no such thing as a blog. We called them online journals, they tended to be long form, and, seriously folks, there were probably under 500. Livejournal didn’t exist yet, Blogger would launch after that and required you to have your own FTP space, and Matt Mullenweg was 14 years old. Neither Jason Kottke nor anyone else got paid to do this since those little text ads hadn’t been invented yet. Amazon affiliations were borderline scandalous after they became available, and asking for donations could be even worse. Corporations with any sort of first-person content on their web sites except for the occasional letter inside an annual report? It was to laugh.
Other related trivia: Google was still the underdog, most households in America were still using analog modems (it’s only been in the last two years that we passed the 50% mark on broadband penetration in US homes), and domain names cost $35 a year direct to Network Solutions, down from $50. I remember looking up my first name dot com in 1997 but not being able to justify that princely sum.
So, ten years later, give or take, what’s different? Not many of those original folks are still around of course. While there are a just-barely-countable number of individuals with blogs, this form has moved past the personal — some of the best writing is organizational, advocative, or promotional. That’s the change we’ve seen all over the web, though. The citizen journalism we dreamed of back then has come to pass, though, and is now sponsored. YouTube came out of nowhere, however; it makes perfect sense now but anyone that remembers what a pain in the ass it was to share a video, even as late as 2003, never would have dreamed we’d be able to watch so many useless clips on a daily basis.
I hate that journalistic ethics don’t apply to people that wield newspaper-like power, especially in the tech world. Rumors spread faster than viruses and can do as much damage. Conversely, the transparent-ness is good — things that were far too niche to be picked up by professional news gathering organizations now reach a wider audience. Something really should be done about WWDC buzz, though.
The overall explosion of content does actually bring along some extra good content, too. The curves don’t line up — the overall scale is probably logarithmic and the good stuff curve is linear at best — but I’d put down good money that right now, someone out there is writing something worthwhile that each one of us could connect with. No one has to be alone anymore, as long as they’re willing to look for their tribe. That is a powerful thing.
The good old days were quieter and slower paced, and I miss being able to have a handle on this whole internet thing. Even as a big stick in the mud, I can’t say we were better off back then, though.
Well said.