PianoWow

This article is a joke. And not the funny kind. The more I think about what he has written here, the more I am baffled by its absurdity. It’s as if Ulanoff needed something to write about to fill his quota and with no alternatives, his Fox News editor decided printing it was better than nothing. Both parties should be ashamed of themselves.

I have many problems with his article. Please read it before continuing, if you’re interested. He speculates that a few websites will be gone by the end of the decade, and mentions Second Life.

1. Second Life and MySpace should never be compared to each other. They are completely different. To lump them in the same category is outrageous.

2. He argues that because the personal websites of the mid 90s faded into oblivion, these sites will also. I have a big problem with this argument. First, I made a webpage in the mid 90s, and it’s still out there, somewhere. Sure, it gets no hits, and I don’t update it, but it’s still there. MySpace won’t disappear because most pages suck. Those people will simply move on, and MySpace will continue to live through the people who know what they’re doing. Second Life has user-generated content, but it doesn’t spread unless it’s good enough to be bought and placed on other people’s land.

3. Second Life could continue to exist even if the entire world wide web completely vanished. It’s a stand-alone program. Completely independent of anything having to do with the web. Much like file sharing programs, or World of Warcraft, it uses the Internet as it exists outside of Google, and all the sites it indexes.

4. I have a problem in general with the Web 2.0 bubble concept. Investors made mistakes when the web was first commercialized, and it created an artificially inflated market. The bubble, so to speak. We’re not seeing rapid growth like the days of the early web. Any bubble he is referring to must not be financial. So it’s some purely philosophical concept that does not deserve any consideration, unless you’re a web designer trying to make money on the Internet.

5. People must make money on Second Life. It’s an economic impossibility for everyone to lose money. I for one have spent something like $50 or so on Second Life so far. Where did that money go? It’s sitting in someone else’s Second Life account. They made money. Profit is another story, but I can’t imagine it being that difficult to do.

6. I imagine that advertising in Second Life is as effective there as it is in real life, if not more so. Honestly, I was psyched when I found out certain companies had online stores in Second Life, and would be interested to visit them.

7. His article is completely baseless. Any article written without sources or data collected somehow is an opinion piece. But he reports this stuff like there are numbers showing the decline in MySpace users or Second Life accounts. In fact, the trends are in the opposite direction. Who does this guy think he is? “I don’t care that the numbers prove me wrong; these sites will disappear becaues I say so.” Give me a break.

There, I’ve vented. I’m okay now.