There Is Nobody On The Internet
This post was accidentally deleted so I’m recreating it from memory which sucks. It may not have the same zing or energy. Do you feel for me? Anyway, here’s the point:
There are, of course, people on the Internet. Many of them. But fewer than we think. And too few to make a strategy of aggregation effective save for all but the largest aggregators (like Google).
Let’s take an example. As of this writing, David Brooks has 138 comments on his latest column titled “The First Test” on the New York Times website. The column went live about 18 hours ago (I think). The number will likely move to about 300 and stabilize there by the end of the day. Do you see where I’m going with this? This is the New York Times. This is Gray Lady. This is the preeminent news organization on the planet and one of the major voices on that website. And he can only get 100 comments in 18 hours?
Something is awry.
I understand all the prerequisites. I understand that the vast vast majority of the Internet is comprised of lurkers and that it’s only a tiny percentage that comment. And I understand that not everybody has the same interest in David Brooks or Bill Kristol or any one of their august group of columnists. And I also understand that there are other websites that have more passionate user communities that can get 100 comments in a post in a shorter time than David Brooks. So this is not the only metric. I understand that.
But all that notwithstanding, this is ridiculous. 100 comments? I thought there were millions and millions of people on the Internet. I thought there were millions of unique visitors on any one site, including the New York Times. Where is everybody? I don’t get it.
I’m left with two conclusions. Either there are far fewer people on the Internet than we’ve been led to believe OR they’re not paying any attention. Regardless, it’s kind of depressing.
But the more important conclusion, for me at least, is that if there are fewer people than we think, than services that serve as aggregators may be in jeopardy. Let’s apply this to the music industry. Let’s look at Hype Machine.
Hype Machine is heralded as the future of the music industry (by some). Why? Because it skims music blogs all over the world and aggregates the songs they’re posting creating a new style of Internet radio/music interface created by users scattered across the information superhighway. The problem, of course, is that aggregating a bunch of websites that nobody’s actually visiting isn’t much aggregation at all. There’s nobody there. Nobody’s home. You feel me?
Click through to any of these music blogs and you’ll see that there are very few comments, very few interactions. Mostly it’s the blogger and their friends diligently posting mp3 files in the hopes that somebody someday will find them. Maybe it’s because music blogging is a terrible way to digest music and it’s a specific medium that has not and will not catch on with the general public.
But, perhaps more importantly, it’s because long tail internet strategies aren’t really that helpful when the long tail is a cold and lonely place, a dead end, a bad part of town, a big abandoned factory, and nobody’s actually there. So aggregating a vast array of nothingness becomes a vapid exercise. Because there is no real liquidity. Because nobody’s there.
If the Internet is as vibrant as people say, I want to see David Brooks get 3,000-5,000 comments when he writes a column. I want to see tiny music blogs get 20-30 comments because people are stumbling upon these little sites, because there are so many people out there, because there’s enough stuff going on that even a small little web can catch a few flies. But I don’t see it happening.
Another spin on this idea: There are a lot of people on the Internet, but they’re trapped in their self-contained worlds and the habits that form their consumption of media are so tightly formed that, despite the enormous possibilities for exploration, most people stay at home, stick to the same couple sources of information and graze casually.
Maybe it’s not that nobody’s out there. But that they’re all clustered in the same big communities and they’re not doing very much while they’re there. This isn’t a permanent state. But I think it’s the state of things right now. Go figure.
