In the nineties, the internet seemed to be a vast endless expanse of wonder and weirdness. Because it was. Especially before any localisation or personalisation.
In the nearly thirty years since, the internet, particularly the web, has exploded, and now it’s orders of magnitude bigger: more people from more countries, more domains, more types of stuff online, more types of devices – and way faster pipes.
And yet it seems smaller. The relentless optimisation by search engines and social media (well, Google and Facebook) has de-weirded the Internet, stripped it of its long tail. Everyone’s talking, but it’s about the same set of things.
I think we need more entry points to the Internet to get some of that magic back. Social media doesn’t cut it, not even Reddit, at one time the Front Page of the Internet. And metafilter survives valiantly, but as a shadowy of its former self (or perhaps in the shadow of what is now the giant corporate internet).
What are some worthy successors to StumbleUpon, Digg and del.icio.us?