5 ms·

I think MySpace ultimately represented the final form of the essentially unlimited customization of the early web. The terribleness of MySpace pages was, I beli

I think MySpace ultimately represented the final form of the essentially unlimited customization of the early web. The terribleness of MySpace pages was, I believe, the catalyst that pushed the design trend in the opposite direction, resulting in the "standardized array of fields" as popularized by Facebook. That said, given the cyclical nature of design trends, I strongly suspect that we'll eventually start to see a gradual shift back toward customization, hopefully avoiding the ridiculous excesses of the MySpace era.

adventured 9y ago
Tumblr has never really lost its wide variety of customization. I'd argue it carried on the Geocities and MySpace individual touch. If you go from one personal tumblr to the next, they often vary to a great degree in atmosphere, color scheme, content posted, purpose, layout, etc. You also still see all the expected bizarre design choices, broken layouts, etc. that one would expect given that. Being able to customize it to a large enough degree to give a sense of one's personality, was one of tumblr's primary appeals to its large younger userbase.
- aaron987 9y ago
  Though it might also be worth mentioning that Tumblr is a total pain in the * to use precisely because of that customization. Every dang page is different and I never know what to click. Worse, Tumblr is so slow that every wrong click is an expensive loss of time and patience. On the rare occasion that I find a Tumblr worth following, I just use the RSS feed because the site is too frustrating.
MisterTea 9y ago
Agreed. There were people who were using templates for their Myspace pages that were hideous. Facebook felt much more uniform and focused on the content (posts) rather than frivolous glitz. But today, I'm off Facebook and any other large centralized social platforms. In the suture if I decide to publish articles or blog posts then I'm going back to the personal web page.
pkilgore 9y ago
I actually think Reddit nailed the balance for subreddits[1], even if it is a little more forum-ey than the social sites you mentioned. I understand that might change soon, which is a shame. [1] excepting /r/spackd--ks[2], as it always should be. [2] post.get_opposite("R.I.P.")
- FreakyT 9y ago
  I assume the upcoming changes you're talking about are the new "structured styles", which I think are overall a good idea. Ultimately, though, the key remaining question will be if they can balance the need for customization with some level of uniformity. So far they've been very slow with the beta test and appear to be taking feedback into account, which leaves me hopeful that the final result will be a net improvement. I think that overall it's a good move for Reddit, as the prevalence of pleasant-looking neutral themes like Naut is a good indication that the default is not really good enough anymore. My hope is that the new structured styles will provide a good balance between customizability and clean design that other sites might follow as a lead.
- EggsOnToast 9y ago
  My main complaint with reddit is that there's no real guidance on how to not get a controversial sub banned. It seems like the rule of thumb is don't get discovered by a social justice movement or a major publisher. Not that anything I would call valuable has been lost so far, but it's still a bad precedent.
  - tudelo 9y ago
    Well they are not a bastion of free speech... They are a company. Create your own website if you want free speech (as far as you consider it ).
    - EggsOnToast 9y ago
      I could have been clearer, I'm aware they're a private company and under no particular obligation to the preservation of free speech principles. My point was that if we're comparing hosting your own site to operating on someone else's platform, it seems like there's marginally more freedom when hosting your own website.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
derefr 9y ago
Tumblr themes still work like this. Tumblr is actually an almost-perfect natural experiment on the value of customization, because there are two views of any given blog post: a public-indexed static HTML view, that the post's author can theme with whatever HTML+CSS+JS they desire; and an RSS-reader-like "dashboard" view, with no theming at all. Polling Tumblr users on how they prefer to read pages—whether in the dashboard web-app, or by opening the links to the standalone HTML versions—would be pretty solid data on whether customization makes content overall better or worse from consumers' perspective.
- meowface 9y ago
  I think a lot more sites should follow Tumblr's lead here, but I fear Tumblr is going to be shut down within the next few years and it'll be the last platform to adopt this approach (at least for a long time).
  - aabreu 9y ago
    Why do you think tumblr is on the way out?
    - neuromantik8086 9y ago
      Possibly because it's owned by Yahoo and Yahoo seems to be going down the toilet? At least that's how I interpreted the parent.
- cm2012 9y ago
  I know I dont open tumblr links on mobile since they take so long to load.
Spooky23 9y ago
I agree. The end of next neutrality may help here as the big players will get worse and worse as the telcos start taking them.

adventured 9y ago

Tumblr has never really lost its wide variety of customization. I'd argue it carried on the Geocities and MySpace individual touch. If you go from one personal tumblr to the next, they often vary to a great degree in atmosphere, color scheme, content posted, purpose, layout, etc. You also still see all the expected bizarre design choices, broken layouts, etc. that one would expect given that. Being able to customize it to a large enough degree to give a sense of one's personality, was one of tumblr's primary appeals to its large younger userbase.

aaron987 9y ago
Though it might also be worth mentioning that Tumblr is a total pain in the * to use precisely because of that customization. Every dang page is different and I never know what to click. Worse, Tumblr is so slow that every wrong click is an expensive loss of time and patience. On the rare occasion that I find a Tumblr worth following, I just use the RSS feed because the site is too frustrating.

MisterTea 9y ago

Agreed. There were people who were using templates for their Myspace pages that were hideous. Facebook felt much more uniform and focused on the content (posts) rather than frivolous glitz. But today, I'm off Facebook and any other large centralized social platforms. In the suture if I decide to publish articles or blog posts then I'm going back to the personal web page.

pkilgore 9y ago

I actually think Reddit nailed the balance for subreddits[1], even if it is a little more forum-ey than the social sites you mentioned. I understand that might change soon, which is a shame. [1] excepting /r/spackd--ks[2], as it always should be. [2] post.get_opposite("R.I.P.")

FreakyT 9y ago
I assume the upcoming changes you're talking about are the new "structured styles", which I think are overall a good idea. Ultimately, though, the key remaining question will be if they can balance the need for customization with some level of uniformity. So far they've been very slow with the beta test and appear to be taking feedback into account, which leaves me hopeful that the final result will be a net improvement. I think that overall it's a good move for Reddit, as the prevalence of pleasant-looking neutral themes like Naut is a good indication that the default is not really good enough anymore. My hope is that the new structured styles will provide a good balance between customizability and clean design that other sites might follow as a lead.
EggsOnToast 9y ago
My main complaint with reddit is that there's no real guidance on how to not get a controversial sub banned. It seems like the rule of thumb is don't get discovered by a social justice movement or a major publisher. Not that anything I would call valuable has been lost so far, but it's still a bad precedent.
- tudelo 9y ago
  Well they are not a bastion of free speech... They are a company. Create your own website if you want free speech (as far as you consider it ).
  - EggsOnToast 9y ago
    I could have been clearer, I'm aware they're a private company and under no particular obligation to the preservation of free speech principles. My point was that if we're comparing hosting your own site to operating on someone else's platform, it seems like there's marginally more freedom when hosting your own website.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

derefr 9y ago

Tumblr themes still work like this. Tumblr is actually an almost-perfect natural experiment on the value of customization, because there are two views of any given blog post: a public-indexed static HTML view, that the post's author can theme with whatever HTML+CSS+JS they desire; and an RSS-reader-like "dashboard" view, with no theming at all. Polling Tumblr users on how they prefer to read pages—whether in the dashboard web-app, or by opening the links to the standalone HTML versions—would be pretty solid data on whether customization makes content overall better or worse from consumers' perspective.

meowface 9y ago
I think a lot more sites should follow Tumblr's lead here, but I fear Tumblr is going to be shut down within the next few years and it'll be the last platform to adopt this approach (at least for a long time).
- aabreu 9y ago
  Why do you think tumblr is on the way out?
  - neuromantik8086 9y ago
    Possibly because it's owned by Yahoo and Yahoo seems to be going down the toilet? At least that's how I interpreted the parent.
cm2012 9y ago
I know I dont open tumblr links on mobile since they take so long to load.

Spooky23 9y ago

I agree. The end of next neutrality may help here as the big players will get worse and worse as the telcos start taking them.