Nintendo leaving Twitter and launching their own news app feels like watching a lone flower bloom in a nuclear crater. nature slowly, finally begins to heal
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the internet starting to re-fragment into having Actual Websites again as centralized social media self-destructs is unironically one of the absolute best, most positive things happening rn
I have about 10 sites that I auto-launch every morning. Some news, some culture, some tech. But they are all individual websites like @daringfireball.bsky.social and @kottke.org and @laughingsquid.com and I love opening them and starting my day by reading things written by actual humans.
A+ rec dude, cos of your post I just discovered the Dr Strangelove play is showing near me next week after I thought I'd missed it entirely. SO to @laughingsquid
I’m Gen Z and have seen RSS logo for decades and never used it. Signed up last week for a feed and they’re amazing! Surprised it never caught on massively
Everyone was using RSS in the age of the blog. But once all the bloggers moved on to «micro blogging» aka Twitter and Tumblr, people’s RSS readers became empty and then Google shut down their superb RSS reader and no one saw the point in moving over to something else.
RSS is still going strong! I have a custom one for my audiobooks, that I load as if it was a podcast feed. Then I use my podcast app to listen at different speeds, cut the silences, continue from where I stopped... Pretty neat
The PERFECT form of the internet was when MySpace ruled the social scene, and I regret not recognising it at the time. MySpace brought us all the ‘everyone has a website’ dream, and provided a common login we could use for a huge network of forums.
You could let your freak flag fly and have some 2000s emo rock blasting from your illegible black and red page any time anyone loaded it. It was a step above blinking ‘under construction’ gifs on a Geocities page, but no so far down the dark path we’ve since walked.
Blogging and reading other people's blogs was so much fun. A much nicer internet experience. I wonder if I can grind my attention span back to it. Hmmmm.
We experimented with the alternative, not the happiest of results. I wonder if it'll work when the non internet media is more of a monolith. Internet's big but not the entire thing people consume.
Single data point but I launched https://portablestatic.com on a whim about a month ago and it’s keeping me busier than the Shopify clients that used to be my bread and butter.
discord is fantastic for social hangouts, but I gotta say that having to go into a discord to get technical support information instead of going to a forum or a wiki feels bad. it's the walled garden problem again.
I'm curious if anyone will ever bring back the web directory, but for those small websites. I recall one time writing about web directories for a zine once, believe it or not
I was part of a discussion yesterday about how a particular charity could help associated local groups, and my main suggestion was stop them depending on SM, especially gatekeeper ones. One website, no login, just info.
I think a lot about how SM — in particular, Facebook — became the de facto “website” for small businesses & organizations. It’s free, easier to use than choosing + figuring out a hosting provider & website builder, & fits the need perfectly: a little static info + the ability to post timely updates.
Same with the Amazon boycott -- finding small, independent sellers that offer better quality. Might cost more, but that helps me reduce my consumption. We spend too much on cheap, disposable crap.
i had to look it up because i kinda live under a rock and couldn't think of any examples offhand. the Twitter-leavers to be about 50/50 between "just lazily moving to a different social media platform" and "we have our own news thingy now"
Neocities. Remember Geocities? Well, Neocities is that again, pretty much. Build your freak-ass website with sparkle text, join Web rings etc. Glorious.
They only died because of search engines. But we didn't expect the search engines to create an AI that steals your traffic by stealing the information from your website, slowly killing your site so eventually the AI will have nothing to feed it information.
Kind of a directory. If your site was, say, an X Files fan site, you could join an X Files webring. You'd put a little button on your site's home page and, when someone clicked it, that would take them to the next site in the webring, and then the next and so on. Good way of linking like sites.
Not only that, boycotts of Amazon and other box retailers mean people are on the web searching for and buying products from the million of other ecomm sites that also sell those products.
I've yelled at so many clouds that peak internet was earlymid 2000s, pre socmedia and smartphones(and hell, even RIGHT after the iphone, not many people had one til later) and The Internet had communities, forums, chatrooms, webrings, etc. Old Youtube was cool. I met so many cool people via forums.
I see Sims 4 stuff on Insta but honestly, their own website is still the best place to check for updates or see what an CAS and build items the DLC offers
If the Internet wants to go back to websites again, it needs to clean up the spam, ads, popups, 0Auth callbacks, third party widgets, and doubleclick intrusions. Invasive advertising has killed classic Internet. No one surfs anymore because no one CAN surf anymore (without adblockers).
The old web was all those things as well. Popup, plugins, weird javascript etc -
The main thing that has change is the increased focus on tracking and monetization and well, Google taking content and putting on their site.
That and peoples attention span has diminished significantly.
The old Internet was FULL of that crap! :)
Pop-ups? You still remember that name? :D Man, IE 7.0 already had a pop-up killer!
If you saw fewer ads on a daily basis, it's because you were spending more time on sites that were made for fun and didn't expect to ever turn a profit.
It’s like Guilliman writing the Codex Astartes and breaking the legions into thousands of chapters so one falling to chaos couldn’t cause so much damage. For all my geekspeak nerds out there.
Doea anyone have any stats regarding this trend? I would be shocked if people started typing in URLs instead of the standard Google search window. Anecdotally, I see more relying on the A.I. summaries instead of clicking through to the actual content.
google and traditional search engines are funded through ads (which are rapidly collapsing), kagi is funded by users, and marginalia is simply a moneypit for its sole developer lol
Kagi's search engine and AI features cost money to use. It's not clear to me that this small-web feature costs money, since it doesn't run off of their search index and I can happily "next post" a bunch without being logged in to my account.
on boycott but signed in yesterday and wtf gigantic nightmare of shite for LOCKING YOU IN, like same business plan as a database company from the 90's except just "free" social media that doesn't want you to have any website ever
Officially, they haven't done so. However, the fact of the matter is that they are not posting what they've shown thus far on their app to the bird. Infer what you will from that.
The only issue I have with their news app is that it's only available in selected countries. Same thing with Nintendo Music. It would be so much better if both apps and future ones from Nintendo would be made available everywhere so we can all enjoy them.
This feels similar to when they stopped doing giant splashy E3 presentations in favor of their own directs/treehouses. They were relentlessly mocked at the time, but it worked out pretty well!
People’s predictions like this one coming true is so amazing. No matter how much people try to say that intuition isn’t legitimate, I believe in it. Sometimes it’s simply pattern recognition. Other times is precognition or clairvoyance or some other type of gnosis.
there is something so fun about it right now. Not sure how it will play out in the long run, but the idea of getting new info along side fun tidbits of different Nintendo IP's is just..charming.
Well I know the @nintendousa.bsky.social Unofficial page will pretty much get us the news until Nintendo of Japan will allow to register to this site given the factor Musk & Trump Dislike DEI, Nintendo supporters via multiple games.
Sadly, I think the conclusion they came to is that no one goes to websites and few know what RSS is. Looking at young people on the bus or in the restaurant, everyone seems to be on the infinite scroll of Tiktok. Nintendo having their own Tiktok-like app makes the most sense for their goals.
Nintendo never should have shut down their official forum. Maybe they can make a gaming focused social media website so the share button on the controller will have a purpose again.
They had a forum that was active for a good chunk of the original Wii's run. Because I remember lots of discussions about what would be added to the virtual console. Then they shut it down for the forum equivalent of "remodeling" only to just never bring it back.
The appified section of the internet fragmented and walled off parts of the internet at the onset of the app age where hand held devices migrated eyeballs to apps rather than the web. Further fragmentation of the appified ecosystem may as well take us further down this rabbit hole. The web lives on
Nintendo is one of few companies with enough pull to just not deal with all of the noise and move their platform wherever they want because they know a significant enough portion of people will follow
Lmao Nintendo? The company that hates it's fans interacting with its properties unless they get paid each time and have 100% control over said property?
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people can use @whtwnd.com to blog here
I just noticed it still lists my Twitter account so I have some updating to do.
Another night finished.
Lost dreams, lost wishes.
New ones came along, it wasn’t all
that bad.
I should have kept that dream for once – our walk was pleasant.
My shoe is finished.
Well, at least the left one,
like I said,
There’s always the right one.
It stopped raining.
Damn I liked the rain,
It gave meaning to the night.
the last time I will write about the foreign exchange student, promise.
I wonder what she is thinking as she
goes to bed?
I wonder if she does?
I wonder what cup-man thinks of all this
-1st post, 1994
But yes, just to hang out, unbothered? I love that.
I'ma gonna join!
People expect to *make money* on the Internet these days: in the '00s most really didn't. In the glory days of Under Construction gifs, guestbooks and
Little did we suspect that it wouldn't be nuclear war that caused the damage but the shit-pocalypse.
When Discord implodes I won't lose a fuckin' thing
The main thing that has change is the increased focus on tracking and monetization and well, Google taking content and putting on their site.
That and peoples attention span has diminished significantly.
Pop-ups? You still remember that name? :D Man, IE 7.0 already had a pop-up killer!
If you saw fewer ads on a daily basis, it's because you were spending more time on sites that were made for fun and didn't expect to ever turn a profit.
very very apt
but is that really happening?
for whom? how? where?
I wouldn't even know where to look for a website these days?
Google certainly doesn't do it?
just loops you right back to various social media and other digital platforms. 🤷♂️🙂
As a developer, I end up on more personal sites sharing a solution to a problem nowadays.
https://www.startpage.com/
both are dominated by results from the same digital platforms as Google, so I'm not sure how much better this is?
there could be no better time to cut another US product out of my life though 😏
The results are vastly different to that of Google, so there is a significant difference somewhere.
To be fair, Google probably does have the best index. . . but they have alterior motives to get you to click things.
Fine choice of PFP :3
google and traditional search engines are funded through ads (which are rapidly collapsing), kagi is funded by users, and marginalia is simply a moneypit for its sole developer lol
@kagi.com any clarification?
https://reboot.digg.com/
They’re slow to new stuff like BlueSky so will probably join later
That’s amazing.
＊No reply required. Notification.
https://youtu.be/SvcsKIIYTZI
also i was thinking almost this same thing when i heard about their app!
You’re not talking about Miiverse right?
First time I’ve seen it used like that on TV
It’s a wasteland of the most violently dumb/racist people on this planet and bots. All it does is make me angry every time I open the app.
Wish they would off each other...