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In economics, a network effect (also called network externality or demand-side economies of scale) is the phenomenon by which the value or utility a user derives from a good or service depends on the number of users of compatible products. Network effects are typically positive feedback systems, resulting in users deriving more and more value from a product as more users join the same network.
The value of Twitter and Substack isn’t the HTML or the CSS, it’s the social circle behind it. That’s why Facebook, founded as a Harvard social media site, outpaced Friendster and MySpace. That’s why half your current crop of comedians and media pundits came out of the Ivy League. That’s why The Federalist Society exists.
Like, by all means, make a new BlueSky or Mastodon or Lemmy whatever. Thank you. But “What if we had a new Facebook, for annoying marketing dweebs?” it’s how we got LinkedIn. And a thousand other knock offs of LinkedIn.
So, keep that in mind.
I have as much power as the Pope, I just don’t have as many people who believe it
- George Carlin
Power, popularity and authority is always based on how many people you can convince to follow your movement. If you have enough people who believe it, I can become Master of the Universe!
Add to that section 1201.
Facebook grew because it was able to make migrating away from Myspace easy. Facebook supplied a tool called SpaceLift that logged into MySpace on your behalf and moved messages back and forth for you. It meant that you didn’t have to leave Myspace behind when you started using Facebook.
If you tried that today, Facebook would send their legion of lawyers to crush you using section 1201.
We built this geocity
We built this Geocity on rock and code!
Rock and code, to the node!
(Under construction)
We built this city on coooock aaaand trooooolls.
Cities start from villages.
That’s what we’ve got here now.
can I be the feces smearing barrel sleeper
Only if you eat your vegetables
Not all cities start from villages: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underoccupied_developments_in_China
Although a feature of discourse on the Chinese economy and urbanization in China in the 2010s, many developments that were initially criticized as “ghost cities” in China have since become occupied and are now functioning cities.
Some cities are literally just built into the empty space, then wait until people move in. It has worked multiple times in China. Some cities literally went from zero to a million inhabitants in under 20 years.
I actually remember this one. Weren’t western articles shitting on China endlessly for this? Calling it “ghost cities” and making up conspiracy theories and all.
You still get lemmitors who think China just has empty cities made of tofu, trains that nobody uses, giant concentration camps full of people whos only crime was desiring freedom, and that china will collapse any day now.
Every village needs its WellAckshuallyer
I miss the old days of people making niche websites for their hobbies, their own blogs, and message boards.
So many people think of the Internet as Google, Meta, Netflix, or <favorite social network here>. That makes me sad.
I don’t see a way back to a less commercialized internet, but little pockets of goodness like Lemmy make me happy.
The thing that I’ve repeated more than anything else the past 5-10 years:
I miss websites.
[Edit] ok second most. I think I’ve said “RELEASE THE LIST” at least twice as much.
I miss things spreading by word-of-mouth, not The Algorithm.™
I miss people making things for fun, not for the exit strategy.
I miss misinformation being called out and bullied mercilessly, not rewarded for Engagement.™
I miss Nazi being hyperbole, not an alternative viewpoint we’re supposed to acknowledge as valid.
I remember The Blues Brothers and “I hate Illinois nazis” and John Belushi and Dan Akroyd running the fucking nazis into the fucking river. The sad thing is, that shit was universally funny back then - there weren’t people in the theater saying “hey wait a minute, that’s not respecting their free speech rights” or worse, “hey, what’s so bad about Illinois nazis?” Just straight up “of course they drove the nazis into the fucking river”.
I miss stumbleupon. I found so much cool stuff and web comics I’m still reading 20 years later.
You’d think that with QR codes every-fucking-where these days, that we could easily swing back to everyone having their own website. Back in the bad old days, it was hell on wheels to share URLs with folks. Now? There’s nothing stopping us.
First name choice was “The internet”
Second name choice was “The pornography machine”
They have forgotten our provenance and purpose. There is no pornography sullying out social media. There is social media sullying our pornography.
Bring back Geocities!
It’s good more people are realizing, buts substack’s owners have been openly pro-facist for at least a year
Loads of early tech leaders who were all free-love back in the day became strangely capitalist once they realised how ludicrously rich they could get.
san francisco in a nutshell
we-built-this-city
we-built-this-city.htm
Is he talking about metaphorical cities, or Geocities?
Built the city from pure HTML so must be talking about domains as empty lands
I can still hear the <iframe />s falling.
Those were the dark days, at the beginning of CSS, when we fought for scraps of anything that smelt like standardisation.
e: autocorrect
The land wasn’t barren though.
It was inhabited by GOPHERs and TELNETs and FTPs and BBSes.
on HTML and CSS*
… doesn’t really have the same ring to it
When I first learned HTML there was no such thing as CSS. Everything was tables and
BGCOLOR<td onClick=“alert(‘Hello, World!’);”>Click me!</td>My first dummy intranet site for grade school used it, but it was a new technology at the time. I remember having a site on geocities a couple years earlier that was all wysiwyg and only used text. Back then, email was cool.
Internet nostalgia.
Jesus or just use Wordpress. Takes like an hour to set up.
I never understood why seemingly everyone uses WP. ‘I need a personal, but professional, web presence’ ‘use this blogging platform’, ‘I need an e-commerce site’ ‘use this blogging platform’ like what.
Maybe I’m old and WP now does everything and the kitchen sink, but I was there when it started and made no sense.
It’s true. They got through some gnarly WYSIWYG problems and, yes, due to plugins they basically do have the kitchen sink available.
There’s some good comparative alternatives as well, but I don’t know much about them yet.
Not static enough!
Bring back web 1.0
Oh no did substack do a bad thing?
Some users were recently sent push notifications to highlight a neo-nazi substack that showed a swastika icon
The bit that infuriates me is how Facebook (and others) also do this, and claims that they’re too big to police everything. Like, you might not be able to check every single thing that gets posted, but it’s definitely not beyond your powers to check everything that your platform actively promotes at people who didn’t request it.
