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My parents used to talk about what things were like when they went to school; my grandparents talked about what things were like when people still had manners. Now we talk about what things were like back in the wild, wild west of the Internet.
"Remember sitting and "surfing" for hours just to see what you'd find?"
It's true, 15 years ago we spent a lot more time hunting around, following trails, and discovering hidden gems of Internet lore. I even had a book - a book! - that, kind of like the phone book, provided URLs to "all the home pages" (home pages!) on the world wide web."
Now, with social networking, instant messaging, and email as part of our minute-to-minute existence, interesting websites get passed around readily from person to person, and there are websites like "All My Faves" that classify and list sites of particular interest. A day almost never goes by that someone doesn't send me an interesting website to explore.
Another trend is toward news magazines and daily updates from these news magazines, many of which are simply cataloging and organizing online content for you based on an interest profile. Urban Daddy is one of these, so is Thrillest, both of which are aimed at young, professional, urban males.
Users can opt for a daily email update, which typically contains the latest stories posted on these sites (all of them ad-sponsored - and what a boon to advertisers who now know exactly to whom they are speaking, and have the instant gratification of knowing exactly how their ads performed!), or they can subscribe via RSS for notifications of new content.
The sites are also very fond of viral sharing of content, and will usually make it very easy for readers to email a story to a friend.
Which leads me to one of the purposes of this post: a friend recently did forward me an email notification from Thrillest, featuring another great Internet idea: service swapping. We all know about Freecycle, and Craigs List, where we can exchange, sell, or give away goods, get jobs, and find dates (and other friends).
Featured application "Swap Right" aims to hook people up to swap services: I'll bake you a cake for your wedding if you'll landscape my garden; you change my oil and I'll babysit your kids.
One caveat where many of these great networking ideas is concerned: they work best in densely populated areas. So while places like Syracuse can have modest success with them, the sheer numbers of choices you get in a New York or Boston will make them much more successful than in our neighborhood.
"Remember sitting and "surfing" for hours just to see what you'd find?"
It's true, 15 years ago we spent a lot more time hunting around, following trails, and discovering hidden gems of Internet lore. I even had a book - a book! - that, kind of like the phone book, provided URLs to "all the home pages" (home pages!) on the world wide web."
Now, with social networking, instant messaging, and email as part of our minute-to-minute existence, interesting websites get passed around readily from person to person, and there are websites like "All My Faves" that classify and list sites of particular interest. A day almost never goes by that someone doesn't send me an interesting website to explore.
Another trend is toward news magazines and daily updates from these news magazines, many of which are simply cataloging and organizing online content for you based on an interest profile. Urban Daddy is one of these, so is Thrillest, both of which are aimed at young, professional, urban males.
Users can opt for a daily email update, which typically contains the latest stories posted on these sites (all of them ad-sponsored - and what a boon to advertisers who now know exactly to whom they are speaking, and have the instant gratification of knowing exactly how their ads performed!), or they can subscribe via RSS for notifications of new content.
The sites are also very fond of viral sharing of content, and will usually make it very easy for readers to email a story to a friend.
Which leads me to one of the purposes of this post: a friend recently did forward me an email notification from Thrillest, featuring another great Internet idea: service swapping. We all know about Freecycle, and Craigs List, where we can exchange, sell, or give away goods, get jobs, and find dates (and other friends).
Featured application "Swap Right" aims to hook people up to swap services: I'll bake you a cake for your wedding if you'll landscape my garden; you change my oil and I'll babysit your kids.
One caveat where many of these great networking ideas is concerned: they work best in densely populated areas. So while places like Syracuse can have modest success with them, the sheer numbers of choices you get in a New York or Boston will make them much more successful than in our neighborhood.
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