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I think Genius.com stated their mission to annotate the web right when they changed their trademark from Rap Genius. Marc Andressen also weighed in on this as i

I think Genius.com stated their mission to annotate the web right when they changed their trademark from Rap Genius. Marc Andressen also weighed in on this as investor, saying that he always wanted an annotation system for the world-wide web. I haven't seen or heard much about the development or adoption of their web annotation concept since that announcement...

dvt 3y ago
Rap Genius (Genius.com) was sold at a loss a few years ago[1]. The annotation idea is, simply put, bad. The only part of Genius.com that made any money was the lyrics serving (they have deals with Spotify and Apple Music iirc); the lyrics explaining, on the other hand, no one cared about. I'm not exactly sure why the annotation idea is bad, but it has been tried many times now (yours truly included) and has failed over and over again. It probably has something to do with our faulty intuition. It makes sense that it should work (the internet is virtually the perfect medium), but in reality, it stubbornly doesn't want to. [1] https://variety.com/2021/digital/news/genius-sold-medialab-which-is-making-layoffs-music-lyrics-1235066298/ https://variety.com/2021/digital/news/genius-sold-medialab-w...
- abakker 3y ago
  Annotation is work, and almost nobody want to do it for free, but many people probably want to have it for free. On the internet, a conversational style accomplishes this better than a didactic one, and feels less like work.
  - xnx 3y ago
    "Annotation" definitely sounds like work, but people freely leave comments all over the place (Reddit, YouTube, TikTok, Hacker News, etc.) for little more than likes, thumbs-up, karma and other "internet points". A system that allowed people to accumulate these points across the web could be really popular.
    - abakker 3y ago
      Kinda my point exactly, though. Commenting and discussing is really the bread and butter of social right now. This site included. But, pure note taking never made sense. Companies pursuing annotation missed the fact that Vbulletin, Reddit, discord, etc all solve the same problem in a different way.
  - nine_k 3y ago
    A lot of people want to have their opinion heard! Making that opinion into something that others would read, and not only for lulz, is a different, much harder trick. And, of course, commercial.spam and non-profit vandalism are problems every commenting system must address.
    - 20after4 3y ago
      And they are very hard problems, yet unsolved.
  - vonnik 3y ago
    Annotation is comment, with the flexibility of going much more granular on the object of comment. We are already commenting on ideas and links for free on HN. No reason not to do it with a greater focus on the text.
- xnx 3y ago
  > The annotation idea is, simply put, bad. It's definitely proved to be a bad business multiple times over, but I foolishly hold on to hope that it's a good a good idea. (Wikipedia might have some parallels.) Without a really low friction way to discover and contribute comments, it's definitely not going anywhere.
- bryanrasmussen 3y ago
  The problem is that annotation is a feature of a developed documentation platform, but because of the nature of the web one needs to sell it as a single product. Nobody cares about annotating everything (except geeks like me), but people working within specific documentation domains require annotation as part of their workflow.
  - detourdog 3y ago
    I have configured squid as kerberized service. The company distributed a browser specific to the proxy server and that was the company browser. This meant that using that browser passed through squid and all the web traffic was cataloged. The browsing could then be annotated and cataloged for the office. It's the kind of thing that takes a while to get configured but after that it is easy to replicate as part of the standard deployment. Anybody could use any browser to do what they want without passing through the proxy server. One browser was configured to use it.
- dr_dshiv 3y ago
  Vanevar Bush’s Memex was also an annotation system for “the web”. We still don’t have it!
  - detourdog 3y ago
    Remember the future is already here, it is just unevenly distributed.
- pjc50 3y ago
  Some people (not very many) want to annotate for good reasons. A whole ecosystem of bad actors want to annotate for bad reasons. And not very many site owners want to be annotated; why would you let people scribble on your pages? (How big is the demand to read annotations? What sort of annotations?)

dvt 3y ago

Rap Genius (Genius.com) was sold at a loss a few years ago[1]. The annotation idea is, simply put, bad. The only part of Genius.com that made any money was the lyrics serving (they have deals with Spotify and Apple Music iirc); the lyrics explaining, on the other hand, no one cared about. I'm not exactly sure why the annotation idea is bad, but it has been tried many times now (yours truly included) and has failed over and over again. It probably has something to do with our faulty intuition. It makes sense that it should work (the internet is virtually the perfect medium), but in reality, it stubbornly doesn't want to. [1] https://variety.com/2021/digital/news/genius-sold-medialab-which-is-making-layoffs-music-lyrics-1235066298/ https://variety.com/2021/digital/news/genius-sold-medialab-w...

abakker 3y ago
Annotation is work, and almost nobody want to do it for free, but many people probably want to have it for free. On the internet, a conversational style accomplishes this better than a didactic one, and feels less like work.
- xnx 3y ago
  "Annotation" definitely sounds like work, but people freely leave comments all over the place (Reddit, YouTube, TikTok, Hacker News, etc.) for little more than likes, thumbs-up, karma and other "internet points". A system that allowed people to accumulate these points across the web could be really popular.
  - abakker 3y ago
    Kinda my point exactly, though. Commenting and discussing is really the bread and butter of social right now. This site included. But, pure note taking never made sense. Companies pursuing annotation missed the fact that Vbulletin, Reddit, discord, etc all solve the same problem in a different way.
- nine_k 3y ago
  A lot of people want to have their opinion heard! Making that opinion into something that others would read, and not only for lulz, is a different, much harder trick. And, of course, commercial.spam and non-profit vandalism are problems every commenting system must address.
  - 20after4 3y ago
    And they are very hard problems, yet unsolved.
- vonnik 3y ago
  Annotation is comment, with the flexibility of going much more granular on the object of comment. We are already commenting on ideas and links for free on HN. No reason not to do it with a greater focus on the text.
xnx 3y ago
> The annotation idea is, simply put, bad. It's definitely proved to be a bad business multiple times over, but I foolishly hold on to hope that it's a good a good idea. (Wikipedia might have some parallels.) Without a really low friction way to discover and contribute comments, it's definitely not going anywhere.
bryanrasmussen 3y ago
The problem is that annotation is a feature of a developed documentation platform, but because of the nature of the web one needs to sell it as a single product. Nobody cares about annotating everything (except geeks like me), but people working within specific documentation domains require annotation as part of their workflow.
- detourdog 3y ago
  I have configured squid as kerberized service. The company distributed a browser specific to the proxy server and that was the company browser. This meant that using that browser passed through squid and all the web traffic was cataloged. The browsing could then be annotated and cataloged for the office. It's the kind of thing that takes a while to get configured but after that it is easy to replicate as part of the standard deployment. Anybody could use any browser to do what they want without passing through the proxy server. One browser was configured to use it.
dr_dshiv 3y ago
Vanevar Bush’s Memex was also an annotation system for “the web”. We still don’t have it!
- detourdog 3y ago
  Remember the future is already here, it is just unevenly distributed.
pjc50 3y ago
Some people (not very many) want to annotate for good reasons. A whole ecosystem of bad actors want to annotate for bad reasons. And not very many site owners want to be annotated; why would you let people scribble on your pages? (How big is the demand to read annotations? What sort of annotations?)