![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
This post is inspired by the BBC's recent 4 part documentary on the history and influence of the internet, The Virtual Revolution (check it out if you've not seen it!). The documentary made me think about how I use the internet compared with how I used to use it over 13 years ago when I was just starting to use the internet. I used IRC back then like I do now, but back then I used IRC for finding “warez”. I don't do this now however as I just use IRC for chatting with furs. However what is interesting about internet usage back then was that I would normally be browsing websites I could find for various information (using Altavista, Lycos, Yahoo, etc) and when I eventually found the furry fandom, I'd spend a lot of time viewing personal sites made by various furs detailing their exploits, etc. This was a time before blogs, LJ, Twitter and pretty much any community based sites you can think of. The trend was if you were on the net, you would have a homepage regardless of whether you had anything relevant to add to the world as it was all about having a presence.
My first site was a perfect example of this. It was called “The Stuff” (so called as I didn't want it to call it “My Homepage” like everyone else) which became a place I would dump things I was interested in such as cheats for games and tracker music I had made. The site was complete with swooshy DHTML effects and irritating midi playing constantly in the background. I had a page of the month page where I asked people to submit suggestions for the page of the month. I only ever received one such suggestion in the form of someone asking me to have their site about the Stone Temple Pilots advertised. Needless to say, the site didn't really do much traffic and was entirely pointless.
On finding furry however, I had more of a reason to have a website and so I made a page where I would eventually start blogging my life (before blogs were known as blogs I should point out!). Through tools like the fursuit ring and other portal sites, I would end up finding other furs and other furs would find me and that's how things would progress until 2001 when I got this LiveJournal account. I pretty much stopped frequently updating my site at this point as I would just update my LJ instead. As this was before YouTube, I would still post videos on my site of furries in the media or stuff I had recorded but with the growing popularity of YouTube, I had moved to that too.
So now, I have this personal website which is pretty much obselete in today's world. This is because these days, people don't need a personal site to let the world know they're there. Now, you just need to sign up to a blogging site, Facebook or Twitter and you're instantly connecting with people, publishing information and receiving instant feedback on what you have to say. It's obviously a lot easier to do than painstakingly designing and building a site and you get the instant gratification through people's comments, etc.
This makes me then wonder about the use of websites in 2010. Generally, you'll be using them to gain information through news or knowledge sites, shopping, or you'll be participating in some kind of web 2.0 site networking with people. There's not much need for personal websites in this day and age it seems.
I've also got my fursuit.co.uk site which I had intended to be used as a hub for UK fursuiters to find out about other fursuiters and also have a central place to find resources to make or buy suits. However as it's not very interactive, I have to manually update it which I seem to do about once a year. Really what I need to do is to redo the site as a place where people can log in and submit links for places to buy suits or materials but also allow them to show off their suits. Thing is much of this already exists elsewhere so I lack the inspiration to do anything.
The one site I made which is actively updated is one I made which updates itself due to user submitted content, furmeets.co.uk. I made that site through wanting something like that to exist and at the time it didn't. Because of this, I see myself adding to the site and helping develop it as I can see people like to use it and find it useful but I don't know what will become of my other sites.
I think it's interesting how the internet has changed over the time I've been connected up to it and will be interested to see where it goes from here, but part of me does wish it was like the old days with personal sites, etc as it was a lot more personal back then as opposed to just having a profile on a million different sites. Even LiveJournal and probably other blogs are dying off thanks to the immediacy of Twitter it seems. I personally certainly use is a lot less than I used to and according to the aforementioned documentary, 90% of blogs lay dormant and unused these days.
However, I will personally try to ensure that I keep my LJ updated with things I find I want to talk about like this. It will just contain less random nonsense and thought as that's what Twitter's for :)
In case your curious and want a trip down memory lane, you can see my site as it was back in it's first version (hosted originally by Freeserve) circa 1999 or the updated version from 2001 which has my whole pre-LJ diary archive. Be sure to use IE and enable the ActiveX script to get the full nostalgic effect due to the poor coding :P
PS. This is the 3rd damn time it took me to write this post due to my PC freezing and it's way past my bed time now!
My first site was a perfect example of this. It was called “The Stuff” (so called as I didn't want it to call it “My Homepage” like everyone else) which became a place I would dump things I was interested in such as cheats for games and tracker music I had made. The site was complete with swooshy DHTML effects and irritating midi playing constantly in the background. I had a page of the month page where I asked people to submit suggestions for the page of the month. I only ever received one such suggestion in the form of someone asking me to have their site about the Stone Temple Pilots advertised. Needless to say, the site didn't really do much traffic and was entirely pointless.
On finding furry however, I had more of a reason to have a website and so I made a page where I would eventually start blogging my life (before blogs were known as blogs I should point out!). Through tools like the fursuit ring and other portal sites, I would end up finding other furs and other furs would find me and that's how things would progress until 2001 when I got this LiveJournal account. I pretty much stopped frequently updating my site at this point as I would just update my LJ instead. As this was before YouTube, I would still post videos on my site of furries in the media or stuff I had recorded but with the growing popularity of YouTube, I had moved to that too.
So now, I have this personal website which is pretty much obselete in today's world. This is because these days, people don't need a personal site to let the world know they're there. Now, you just need to sign up to a blogging site, Facebook or Twitter and you're instantly connecting with people, publishing information and receiving instant feedback on what you have to say. It's obviously a lot easier to do than painstakingly designing and building a site and you get the instant gratification through people's comments, etc.
This makes me then wonder about the use of websites in 2010. Generally, you'll be using them to gain information through news or knowledge sites, shopping, or you'll be participating in some kind of web 2.0 site networking with people. There's not much need for personal websites in this day and age it seems.
I've also got my fursuit.co.uk site which I had intended to be used as a hub for UK fursuiters to find out about other fursuiters and also have a central place to find resources to make or buy suits. However as it's not very interactive, I have to manually update it which I seem to do about once a year. Really what I need to do is to redo the site as a place where people can log in and submit links for places to buy suits or materials but also allow them to show off their suits. Thing is much of this already exists elsewhere so I lack the inspiration to do anything.
The one site I made which is actively updated is one I made which updates itself due to user submitted content, furmeets.co.uk. I made that site through wanting something like that to exist and at the time it didn't. Because of this, I see myself adding to the site and helping develop it as I can see people like to use it and find it useful but I don't know what will become of my other sites.
I think it's interesting how the internet has changed over the time I've been connected up to it and will be interested to see where it goes from here, but part of me does wish it was like the old days with personal sites, etc as it was a lot more personal back then as opposed to just having a profile on a million different sites. Even LiveJournal and probably other blogs are dying off thanks to the immediacy of Twitter it seems. I personally certainly use is a lot less than I used to and according to the aforementioned documentary, 90% of blogs lay dormant and unused these days.
However, I will personally try to ensure that I keep my LJ updated with things I find I want to talk about like this. It will just contain less random nonsense and thought as that's what Twitter's for :)
In case your curious and want a trip down memory lane, you can see my site as it was back in it's first version (hosted originally by Freeserve) circa 1999 or the updated version from 2001 which has my whole pre-LJ diary archive. Be sure to use IE and enable the ActiveX script to get the full nostalgic effect due to the poor coding :P
PS. This is the 3rd damn time it took me to write this post due to my PC freezing and it's way past my bed time now!
