“If urban history can be applied to virtual space and the evolution of the Web, the unruly and twisted message boards are Jane Jacobs. They were built for people, and without much regard to profit. How else do you get crowds of not especially lucrative demographics like flashlight buffs (candlepowerforums.com), feminists (bust.com) and jazz aficionados (forums.allaboutjazz.com)? By contrast, the Web 2.0 juggernauts like Facebook and YouTube are driven by metrics and supported by ads and data mining. They’re networks, and super-fast — but not communities, which are inefficient, emotive and comfortable. Facebook — with its clean lines and social expressways — is Robert Moses par excellence.”
Best internet metaphor ever
The Old Internet Neighborhoods by Virginia Heffernan, Sunday 10th July, NYTimes.
I am too ignant to get the metaphor but I liked this article. I was writing a training module today and threw in a slide on “the history of online communities”. “Neighbourhoods” is a nice way of putting it. What’s also interesting is that so much of the culture of the internet - its acronyms, tropes, habits, manners - comes from those neighbourhoods, just as (I guess) a lot of a city’s culture does.
