It's All Been Done Before ...

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the infancy of the Internet — those glory days when the Web was new and everything was different and exciting. Back in 1994, there was no Amazon, no eBay, no PayPal. No broadband. Altavista was the search engine of choice; Google wasn’t even a twinkle in its fathers’ eyes.

The Web was a wild new frontier, full of experimentation and possibility. It was a people place where “information wanted to be free” and people built web sites out of curiosity, altruism, and idealism. It was a world of bright ideas and innovation, when one could get wildly excited about tables, frames, and animated GIFs.

It was a world focused on information sharing, collaboration, and empowerment. You heard a lot of talk about the potential of technology for bringing about social change and “levelling the playing field.” Newsgroups and web forums let people post and share ideas, support one another, and debate important issues.

Then, along about 1997-1998, the corporate world woke up to the profit potential of the Web. In a few short years, the Web was hijacked by big business, commoditized, and transformed into an ecommerce money machine — spelling the end of an era of people power and grass roots innocence.

Soon, nothing wanted to be free. Popular sites began charging for information. Advertising ruled. Then came the consolidations. Big fish gobbled up the smaller fish. Mergers and acquisitions became the order of the day. Only the strong survived.

Then, around the turn of the millenium, a new trend emerged. The blogging phenomenon was born, quietly and with little fanfare — launching a widespread grass roots revolution and a triumphant resurgence of people power. Today, servers everywhere groan under the strain of an estimated 28 million blogs and counting.

These days, I’m experiencing a strange sense of déja vu, coupled with uneasy glimmerings of impending doom. To quote the Barenaked Ladies, it’s all been done before ... Remember Zeal? This novel experiment was based on a breakthrough concept and enjoyed a strong and dedicated user community. It was a forerunner of today’s social bookmarking and tagging sites like Wink, StumbleUpon, and Furl. Today, Zeal is part of the LookSmart network (as is Furl).

The phenomenal growth and impact of blogging; the advent of exciting new technologies; the wild and wooly sense of novelty and innovation; the feeling of community — it all puts me in mind of the heyday of the early Web.

But it’s all still free. The blogging tools, the massive volume of information being pushed out into the blogosphere, the ancillary resources. Sure, some blogs are monetized by AdSense, but this brave new world hasn’t yet sold its soul.

How long til it does? It’s just a matter of time, of course. The corporate hounds are smelling money to be made, and already there are signs that business has awakened to the profit potential of the blogosphere.

Here we go again ...