Comment by Y_Y
I remember when the internet was collaboratorative rather than competitive. I think then tech companies got so big that they ran out of scientists and engineers and had to hire fairground hucksters.
I remember when the internet was collaboratorative rather than competitive. I think then tech companies got so big that they ran out of scientists and engineers and had to hire fairground hucksters.
The amish are still laughing at us and it just keeps getting more embarresing.
Big tech companies are full of extremly competent people who for the most part cant get shit done. A hand full of cooperating people armed with curiosity and the desire to make something useful can do things tens to thousands of times better.
What are these websites they make that need hundreds of requests to show a bit of text? I cant view source without repeatedly screaming from laughter.
Maybe the answer to the riddle is to force the pattern and make usefulness as well as asking for help requirements for participation.
Yes and no.
The internet was collaborative when it was very small. You still had islands like AOL and Compuserve and such.
Then as it got bigger the big islands like AOL broke, and the views started going to larger and larger websites (think things like news sites). These sites had to work with vendors (Microsoft/Apache) to be able to support the load without crashing. While this is occurring hardware got a lot faster and databases more performant (along with things like K/V caching).
This lead to the last 'social media' wave where just a few large companies could host enough servers to serve everyone on the internet (within reason). These companies sucked a lot of wind out of the smaller companies that were successful. You could wake up one day and find out Google had implemented your entire business model and is giving it away for 'free'.
But free was never free. Those big companies need your eyeballs. They need your attention. And they will do anything regardless of the ethics to keep it (what are small fines between friends). There was not much more room to expand in to, you're only expanding into other companies. You take over/replace the ones that give their data away and 'compete/fight with' the ones that don't.