This is probably one of my favorite developments coming from the quarantine. Maciej Ceglowski is a keeper of the torch reminding us of what the web used to be: a weird place filled with weird people who were guided by curious intellects and a belief that the internet can and would liberate us in some strange and amazing way.
Before social media amplified celebrity worship and extreme positions, everyone's voice on the web was only given weight by the merit or personality of what was said. No matter how popular you were on the old internet your voice was never loud enough to silence another. People were mostly anonymous (in practice because governments were caught off guard) and anyone could start a quirky website that was suddenly the talk of the town.
I miss the old internet that inspired a lot of brilliant and all too idealistic people to code into the night and bring us these amazing innovations. In some ways Mark Zuckerberg was cut from the old cloth. The original Facebook was in many ways amazing, quickly evolving, and so open. Everything took a turn for the worse with advertising.
Thank you Maciej for the trip down memory lane. Some of us may cling to the past but I hope there's another version of you and the old guard of the internet waiting for us or our future generations when we are gone.
> In some ways Mark Zuckerberg was cut from the old cloth. The original Facebook was in many ways amazing, quickly evolving, and so open. Everything took a turn for the worse with advertising.
At the same time, for me, Facebook was the first example of the internet becoming more samey, centralized and where its users became more consumers of a platform instead of individual creators.
When I first got to use Facebook (after it had opened up to more than just users from particular US universities), I loved the fact that it had a cohesive look and feel. The newsfeed I was a bit less enthusiastic about, but hey it was convenient compared to visiting my friends' profile pages.
But over time I kind of started missing actively visiting the 'page' of a friend, and especially the craziness in how they were able to modify their myspace/cu2/hyves.nl/etc. pages. Sure, it was often ugly as hell, filled with emoji, psychedelic backgrounds, and autoplaying music. but it was /them/ expressing themselves.
I think a lot of what's turned out to be problematic about Facebook (and perhaps the broader internet) is that most platforms have completely locked down people's ability to express themselves to comments and a tiny little profile picture next to it.
That customizability on MySpace was a security nightmare. My wife was the head of the security team back in the day and a lot of what they did to secure the site was duct tape and baling wire. It was kind of entertaining to log onto the hacker forums and see commentary on my wife's work for the day.
Seconded. I bet if we could get a pipe between someone using nuance dragon and an Amazon print as you go book service, we could sell a lot more of these extremely niche books / memoirs.
1. Users of site request and upvote requests for individual memoirs, and comment with their questions and prompts, which are also upvoted. Similar to an AMA. Upvotes are purchased with preorder deposits, and if the subject accepts, the funds will be transferred from users to site. Similar to Kickstarter.
2. Subject sees that their name is high up and accepts the memoir invitation. A tool allows them to select the questions and prompts they want to use.
3. An app plays the prompts using text to speech and records the conversation with the subject, performing a live transcription.
4. The transcript is sent to an editor, who fixes any transcription mistakes and adds some organization so the book has some sense of flow. Using a transcript and audio combination editor, the interview audio is recut to match the text.
5. The edited transcript is sent through a template and sent to Amazon's publishing service. Audio goes through similar process for corresponding audio book. Preordered copies are delivered to the users that upvoted the subject. Revenue is split between site and subject. If successful, subject releases a sequel written in a more traditional way and offers it to the same users.
I'd love an option, as a backer, to get the raw interview audio. Call me a skeptic on recuts preserving nuance.
But yeah, I'd set aside a monthly budget for backing such memoirs, even if I never listen to the results, simply getting them made about subjects I find interesting feels like a worthwhile use of a few bucks.
> The newsfeed I was a bit less enthusiastic about, but hey it was convenient compared to visiting my friends' profile pages.
The newsfeed was copied/acquired from FriendFeed. Messages was Beluga. Instagram and WhatsApp got on FB bandwagon too. FB just had the cold hard cash laying there and just had to put it in front of these people. Cold hard cash and no morality when it comes to selling people personal data, but, in their defence, we put that data there in the first place, it's the fuzzy binding contract that's made when one joins Facebook—look at all these social tools for you to share and connect, for the mere price of letting us exploit you and your data and enrich us and our investors while doing that. It's a power structure, really.
> At the same time, for me, Facebook was the first example of the internet becoming more samey, centralized and where its users became more consumers of a platform instead of individual creators.
This is partly because Facebook introduced "the internet" to people who would otherwise never create anything on the web.
I agree that was what I originally disliked about Facebook. But I think a bigger problem (that definitely got worse over time) was the way everything gets swept away on FB. If you see something, it's very difficult to get back to it later. This is demoralizing for the writers too.
Most of the time, I'm here for the text. I really appreciate straight answers in legible fonts. They're a rarity in the age of SEO-optimised, engagement-obsessed websites.
In that sense, I'm happy with platforms that standardise the experience. It's just unfortunate when those platforms add their own layer of annoyances in the name of growth.
> At the same time, for me, Facebook was the first example of the internet becoming more samey, centralized and where its users became more consumers of a platform instead of individual creators.
> The newsfeed I was a bit less enthusiastic about, but hey it was convenient compared to visiting my friends' profile pages.
At first I liked the newsfeed but looking back I think that's the beginning of what killed Facebook for me. At one time the site was about you. When you logged in you went to your page. Now it's about other people almost exclusively.
Same cloth? Zukerburger was an asshole to begin with, based on the stories told so far. No he’s just behaving with impunity after selling his soul to the Drumpf.
I absolutely loved this when I found it. Delicious was just such a great place to find cool, esoteric stuff.
I love any sites with lists on it made by regular people. Rateyourmusic is the same. Find a band you love, find out who else has an album on their list, get digging.
I ran the full site for about two years after 2017, using the code I inherited from AVOS, but a lot of people assumed the site was dead because they tried to visit delicious.com. That was never part of the sale and has been kept for some unknown purpose.
The problem was that even years after making the site read-only, I couldn't cope with the level of spam traffic directed at delicious, and had constant problems keeping it online. Rewriting that read-only version so it's not a bloated layer cake of 20 services is my attempt at bringing it back online more sustainably.
At what stage in its existence was Facebook in any way open? It was a walled garded from its inception - initially restricting access to college students only. In fact I never did and still do not consider Facebook as "the web". There is the web and then there is Facebook. The two just use similar technologies but live apart.
My personal projects (all too elementary to talk about at this point) are intended to be just that. Not flashy, but functional, they respect your privacy and etc. They are what they are and there's no secret or desire to dump it if it doesn't make $ billion.
I was thinking a while ago of the old "web ring" idea where likeminded sites were all listed together in a ring and you could explore them.
It would be nice if there was a "simple, privacy oriented, sustainable" web ring out there of good projects doing good things for their customers.
> I was thinking a while ago of the old "web ring" idea where likeminded sites were all listed together in a ring and you could explore them.
I think you're right. The best we have now are the "awesome-*" lists. Here is an "aggregation" of the options on offer: https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome
> Everything took a turn for the worse with advertising.
I agree with this 100%. I'm old enough to remember when the internet worked fine without having advertising everywhere. Now we're supposed to be convinced that the whole thing would cease to exist if there weren't popover ads and auto playing videos. :/
> In some ways Mark Zuckerberg was cut from the old cloth. The original Facebook was in many ways amazing, quickly evolving, and so open.
"I" created Facebook in 1999. The commpany I worked for wanted a "networked solution for all and everyone." Not big enough market, bad timing etc. So there you have it; timing is _everything_.
To get to that point the trick was to build it as something else first, and then switch. Myspace was primarily a platform for bands, which are fun and cool, which contributed to its early success.
Jwz:
> Your "use case" should be, there's a 22 year old college student living in the dorms. How will this software get him laid?
Before social media amplified celebrity worship and extreme positions, everyone's voice on the web was only given weight by the merit or personality of what was said. No matter how popular you were on the old internet your voice was never loud enough to silence another. People were mostly anonymous (in practice because governments were caught off guard) and anyone could start a quirky website that was suddenly the talk of the town.
I miss the old internet that inspired a lot of brilliant and all too idealistic people to code into the night and bring us these amazing innovations. In some ways Mark Zuckerberg was cut from the old cloth. The original Facebook was in many ways amazing, quickly evolving, and so open. Everything took a turn for the worse with advertising.
Thank you Maciej for the trip down memory lane. Some of us may cling to the past but I hope there's another version of you and the old guard of the internet waiting for us or our future generations when we are gone.