I was doing another round of link research for the blog (you'll see some new resources soon), and once again Bonnie and I ran into another round of dead sites. You've heard me rant about this before – there's so many blogs and sites out there they would be awesome, interesting, and progeeky if they were actually updated.
In ranting to a friend, he simply said, "Oh, like Geocities?" That stopped me in my mental tracks.
Geocities let people quickly put up websites – and there are many jokes on how people could put them up and forget them. If you've been on the net for a good amount of time, you remember them.
But really, the same think keeps happening anyway. It's easy to put up a site – and forget it. No HTML is required with some of the quick site design engines.
It's easy to put up a blog.
It's easy to make a Facebook group.
It's easy to make a mailing list.
It's easy to let it all die and stagnate, just as people have done with many internet tools before.
All that power we have in technology, all that's developed the past few years, all that creative potential we can use. It's easy to be a webmaster without much skill, a publisher whose never published, a video editor on your home computer. Anyone can do it more or less.
But not everyone can maintain it. Or they may be able to maintain it but are interrupted. Or they have to change priorities. Or they're just not organized enough to do it.
This leaves us in an age of unupdated pages, unfinished series, dead blogs, and dead sites. It's a bizarre side effect of this amazing technological age we live in – so many people can create, but not everyone can maintain it.
There are a few things to remember:
- Any site, effort, publishing endeavor, etc. you put on line will have to compete with dead sites and blogs still in the search rankings.
- People are used to dead sites and online endeavors. If you slip in your efforts, your site may be all to quickly considered among the stagnant and dead.
- I think that endurance and long-term delivery may make you stand out in an age of dead media.
- It seems to me "dead media" ends up happening no matter the media itself, especially in the internet age. Brand spanking new technologies will doubtlessly be used to produce new unsupported products and half-made efforts.
The dead media? It's been with us on the internet for ages. It'll be with us in the future.
How are you going to make sure your efforts aren't lumped in with such bygone endeavors – and to make sure they won't join them.