4 ms·

I see it in a positive light. For me it means back to the roots. People will visit your website by typing in your URL directly into the address bar. Direct mark

I see it in a positive light. For me it means back to the roots. People will visit your website by typing in your URL directly into the address bar. Direct marketing and mouth-to-mouth will be a thing again.

krapp 1y ago
No one ever discovered websites through "mouth to mouth" or direct marketing (whatever that's supposed to mean.. flyers? Junk mail?) Web portals and link aggregators and bookmarks and other means of discovery were a thing from the very beginning of the web, well before Google even came along.
- Aldipower 1y ago
  That's exactly what I mean with "back to the roots". Search became already so bad, if it continues, aggregators and bookmarks will be maybe a thing again.
  - krapp 1y ago
    They still are a thing to be fair. Every social media platform is also a link aggregator and your browser still supports bookmarks. Typing a URL into the bar directly is always going to be a lousy way of doing things, however, especially since they no longer map to remote directories and files as they're meant to. URLs are like telephone numbers but worse (and no one memorizes phone numbers anymore.)
- palmfacehn 1y ago
  People have been sharing URLs since the days of email and Usenet.
- roryirvine 1y ago
  Sure they did. Search engines and hierarchical directories didn't take off until late 1994, and the first link aggregators like WebRing didn't come along along for at least another year after that. Before then, website discovery was almost entirely word of mouth, supplemented by a little bit of self-promotion on various mailing lists and newsgroups. The only other routes were asking your local sysadmin, taking a trip to your local bookstore to browse the few web-related pages in the Whole Internet Guide and Catalogue, or a handful of links in magazines like Mondo 2000 and Wired - but they were very minor, and tended only to be used by true neophytes.
  - dragonwriter 1y ago
    > Search engines and hierarchical directories didn't take off until late 1994, and the first link aggregators like WebRing didn't come along along for at least another year after that. > Before then, website discovery was almost entirely word of mouth Yeah, but before that there were almost no websites to discover, and no one discovering them; even by the end of 1994—generally held out as the first year websites aimed at the general public were available at all, and, as you note, also the year search engines and directories took off, displacing any word of mouth as the main discovery route, there were still only a little over two thousand websites in total.
eviks 1y ago
How can living in a dark cave be seen in a positive light?
- Aldipower 1y ago
  I depends on the angle you are looking from. The current situation with Google _search_ is looking very dark too me, so looking away from Google makes the world a little bit brighter.
  - eviks 1y ago
    But if you're looking from a very dark place into an even darker place (which manual typing links is), no angle will make it look brighter?

krapp 1y ago

No one ever discovered websites through "mouth to mouth" or direct marketing (whatever that's supposed to mean.. flyers? Junk mail?) Web portals and link aggregators and bookmarks and other means of discovery were a thing from the very beginning of the web, well before Google even came along.

Aldipower 1y ago
That's exactly what I mean with "back to the roots". Search became already so bad, if it continues, aggregators and bookmarks will be maybe a thing again.
- krapp 1y ago
  They still are a thing to be fair. Every social media platform is also a link aggregator and your browser still supports bookmarks. Typing a URL into the bar directly is always going to be a lousy way of doing things, however, especially since they no longer map to remote directories and files as they're meant to. URLs are like telephone numbers but worse (and no one memorizes phone numbers anymore.)
palmfacehn 1y ago
People have been sharing URLs since the days of email and Usenet.
roryirvine 1y ago
Sure they did. Search engines and hierarchical directories didn't take off until late 1994, and the first link aggregators like WebRing didn't come along along for at least another year after that. Before then, website discovery was almost entirely word of mouth, supplemented by a little bit of self-promotion on various mailing lists and newsgroups. The only other routes were asking your local sysadmin, taking a trip to your local bookstore to browse the few web-related pages in the Whole Internet Guide and Catalogue, or a handful of links in magazines like Mondo 2000 and Wired - but they were very minor, and tended only to be used by true neophytes.
- dragonwriter 1y ago
  > Search engines and hierarchical directories didn't take off until late 1994, and the first link aggregators like WebRing didn't come along along for at least another year after that. > Before then, website discovery was almost entirely word of mouth Yeah, but before that there were almost no websites to discover, and no one discovering them; even by the end of 1994—generally held out as the first year websites aimed at the general public were available at all, and, as you note, also the year search engines and directories took off, displacing any word of mouth as the main discovery route, there were still only a little over two thousand websites in total.

eviks 1y ago

How can living in a dark cave be seen in a positive light?

Aldipower 1y ago
I depends on the angle you are looking from. The current situation with Google _search_ is looking very dark too me, so looking away from Google makes the world a little bit brighter.
- eviks 1y ago
  But if you're looking from a very dark place into an even darker place (which manual typing links is), no angle will make it look brighter?