I guess I should blog something about AOL going all-free to broadband subscribers.
Play it, Jon:
Ooh can you feel the same
Ooh ya gotta love the pain
Ooh it looks like rain
again
Yeah feel it comin’ in
The mountains win again
It has been more than a decade since I had an AOL account. I had to have one then in order to post stuff from NetGuide, a magazine I was writing for at the time.
NetGuide and AOL had a lot in common. Both were based on the idea that the Internet would be something like TV. They assumed that "brands" would dominate, the same old brands. And the same old celebrities.
Eventually, those concerns do bubble to the top of the stack. Paris Hilton, for instance, has 10 times the number of hits as DailyKos. But traffic and even links are not the be-all and end-all of Internet influence.
This is something Big Media has yet to understand. It’s something, in fact, they continue to make fun of.
Consider Stephen Colbert’s word for yesterday, wikiality.
This is reality as defined by Wikipedia. Colbert seized on the idea
that Wikipedia entries are democratic — anyone can make them, and
anyone can edit them. Thus, he told his audience, they could go to the
Wikipedia entry for the word elephant, write that their numbers in
Africa were increasing (they’re actually down 90% in 10 years) and that
would change reality.
Well, it didn’t. Wikipedia
has long had protections in place to prevent this kind of vandalism.
Yes, anyone can get in and write. No, not everything you write will
stay. No, not everyone who writes can keep writing — vandals are
detected and stopped.
This is just one example of the kind of reality denial AOL has always
gone through. It was a great set of Internet training wheels 10 years
ago, but no one needs training wheels anymore — the Web is now 17. In
terms of real popularity, I began working on this medium almost 12
years ago. Folks are experienced enough with this medium to deal with
its problems. They don’t need big brother watching over them.
Not that big brother is ever going to be convinced. But we just don’t need AOL.
What made the Colbert bit funny is his understanding of how Wikipedia works. You have to understand that there is an underlying premise that Colbert believes he has hundreds of millions (maybe trillions since reality is not his strong suite) of loyal viewers and as such if they all were willing to try and edit Wikipedia they could effect whatever change he wanted. It’s not vandalism if the populations of whole galaxies are behind the change, is it?
What made the Colbert bit funny is his understanding of how Wikipedia works. You have to understand that there is an underlying premise that Colbert believes he has hundreds of millions (maybe trillions since reality is not his strong suite) of loyal viewers and as such if they all were willing to try and edit Wikipedia they could effect whatever change he wanted. It’s not vandalism if the populations of whole galaxies are behind the change, is it?