4 ms·

I'd like for millennials to comment on this.

Dirlewanger 8y ago
A milliennial wrote the article.
kipchak 8y ago
Mid 90s here, to me there's something to it. To me the shift became noticeable around 2008, with it at least feeling like a good portion of my time online is spent on a smaller number of less exciting sites. Perhaps I simply burnt out early though. On forums getting to know the groups members and it's in-jokes has the advantage of giving interactions a sense of scale or place, in that you roughly know who the people you're talking to are and have a degree of rapport or common interests, while still being pseudonymous and the freedom that brings is I think part of what made them appealing and special. Forums can also become somewhat clique-ey and insular if new blood isn't rotated through, or can die out if the topic is too narrow to keep them active. More content stream based social media (Instagram, Facebook, Reddit for the most part) has less of a focus around specific topics and discussing them and more presenting content and reacting to it. This results in people both tailoring what they make to generate hits, and interactions with other users being rather fleeting if you're not already connected to them, as the pool of people you're interacting with is often too large and unfocused to see those people again. I'd say there are some exceptions though, such as subreddits that stay in a sweet spot of user numbers or Discord channels and Twitch channels for example. Additionally 4Chan is somewhat of a blend of the content stream and a forum system. Part of the reason it's going this way is that the content stream approach is better-suited to advertisement and appealing to larger audiences. In school a surprising number of people would browse through the front page of Reddit never going into subreddits or commenting for example. I would guess Lurkers like that make up a good portion of users now, and I think advertisers and site builders will tailor to them. In general a slight shift from the internet being a space for collaboration between people to a place for companies to sell things seems to have happened. A small example is game maps, servers and skins going from being things people made and shared with each other to something companies sell.

A milliennial wrote the article.

Mid 90s here, to me there's something to it. To me the shift became noticeable around 2008, with it at least feeling like a good portion of my time online is spent on a smaller number of less exciting sites. Perhaps I simply burnt out early though. On forums getting to know the groups members and it's in-jokes has the advantage of giving interactions a sense of scale or place, in that you roughly know who the people you're talking to are and have a degree of rapport or common interests, while still being pseudonymous and the freedom that brings is I think part of what made them appealing and special. Forums can also become somewhat clique-ey and insular if new blood isn't rotated through, or can die out if the topic is too narrow to keep them active. More content stream based social media (Instagram, Facebook, Reddit for the most part) has less of a focus around specific topics and discussing them and more presenting content and reacting to it. This results in people both tailoring what they make to generate hits, and interactions with other users being rather fleeting if you're not already connected to them, as the pool of people you're interacting with is often too large and unfocused to see those people again. I'd say there are some exceptions though, such as subreddits that stay in a sweet spot of user numbers or Discord channels and Twitch channels for example. Additionally 4Chan is somewhat of a blend of the content stream and a forum system. Part of the reason it's going this way is that the content stream approach is better-suited to advertisement and appealing to larger audiences. In school a surprising number of people would browse through the front page of Reddit never going into subreddits or commenting for example. I would guess Lurkers like that make up a good portion of users now, and I think advertisers and site builders will tailor to them. In general a slight shift from the internet being a space for collaboration between people to a place for companies to sell things seems to have happened. A small example is game maps, servers and skins going from being things people made and shared with each other to something companies sell.