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Monday, August 14, 2006

A Bit Of A Change At The Next Big Web Thing

The more observant of you may have noticed that things have been a bit quiet of late around these parts. Summer lull and increasing personal work load aside, I have been thinking about the future of this blog and it's direction.

I originally set it up as an experiment in building a community driven site, where posters other than myself added stories. The incentive for the regular contributors was a share in any of the revenues we gained at the site, through sponsorship or whatever. Unfortunately, this never really took off. Other contributions were few and far between for the same reasons I have - time and workload - which is a shame.

My original intention was to do as little writing here as possible, instead I ended up doing 98% of it, and even trying to keep up with all the new sites and ideas out there can be quite punishing. Personally, I think we've covered off some great sites in our short history, which have already gone on to bigger things. It's been an exciting time for me seeing the new technologies blossom and these new ideas form and coalesce. It's possible to see strands and ideas that if not already being developed, soon will be, as well as the burgeoning joy that is Web 2.0.

However, there is a dark side to all this, in my opinion. As well as all the good stuff happening out in internet land, there's been an increasing amount of utterly derivative drek. An increasing number of new sites I see just look like they were pulled from random name and idea generator, given a hackneyed marketing spin and silly name, then pushed out into the world to dilute an already large pool. I have to say I'm getting tired of it.

Web 2.0 does have some great stuff going for it and will continue to do so. However, I think rather than carry on the current model of trying to get x amount of sites featured per month to do a vote, the whole thrust of the this site will change. Here's a list of what's going to happen here.

No more monthly votes. All it proves is who can point the most surfers at our vote page and get them to vote. Internet votes were seldom illuminating so we'll drop ours. This means those that won previous votes are off an even more elite club than would have been if we carried on.
No more pretense that this is a community blog. It's now my blog and my opinions. I love the stuff that out there, but want to write about it in my own style, not try and make it fit a rigid framework as it does now.
Less site specific posts, unless they really merit it.
More commentary and opinions on the internet - both good and bad. Silly trends, missed opportunities, gaps in the market, etc...
Some new sections to the site - more will be revealed as and when I get to 'em

So, there should also be a slight redesign involved as well, in time. If this doesn't sound like your cup of tea, then I'd like to thank you for you involvement here and hope our paths cross again in the future. If it does sound like you'll enjoy the ride - stick with us, there'll be lot happening in coming months here - I feel like I've been holding back a lot due to the now finsihed format of the site. Now that's gone, I can really let rip with it.

1 Comments:

Derek Anderson said...: Wow!; 12:11 PM

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