2007′s internet communities seen by xkcd
I enjoy reading xkcd in these times I’m bored without anything to do, but at the same time, not willing to shutdown the computer. So basically, I get to xkcd, and go hit the Random button until it is so late that it’s mandatory to go to bed (in order to wake up soon early to still catch users from “distant” time zones online). I tend not to read the comic very often so the “Random” button still delivers me some unseen comics (hey, I haven’t seen all 900+ comics yet!).
Today the “Random” button delivered me a comic from Spring 2007. Its number is 256 (heh! the amount of MB the VPS that runs this blog has of guaranteed RAM). Here it is, click to see bigger:
Look at how much has changed to nowadays. To make this map more actual, I think Facebook and MySpace should swap positions. Orkut would need to be smaller (unless you’re considering only the accesses by Brazilian people, and even that is decreasing). We would need another fairly small island for Google+, and a bigger one for Twitter. Second Life would disintegrate. Sourceforge island would get smaller and an island slightly to the left of it would accommodate GitHub along with smaller islands for all the recently-born git-hosting websites.
Other interesting point is, The Icy North would get smaller (global warming? 🙂 ) and the Mountains of Web 1.0 would be renamed to Mountains of copy-cat Web “2.0″. And let’s not forget, the IRC isles would certainly keep the same size or even be bigger, but they would be much more idle and abandoned (IMHO a island for dead/98% idle IRC channels and users should be created, and another one for malfunctioning IRC bots).
And as I am really jealous, I’d also like a small island for this blog on the Blogipelago. 🙂
The “Gulf of Youtube” would get an island on the middle divided between Next New Networks, sorry, I meant YouTube Next Lab and Audience Development Group[¹] and VEVO (size based on watch count). And etc. This is just my view of the actual www vs. 2007′s www. You certainly disagree with me in some points. But, there’s something you must agree: in four years, the web has changed so much, and we only notice when we look back with wide open eyes and mind.
Now go read xkcd. Or go outside getting some Vitamin D (not really possible at the moment of writing of this post, as it’s midnight here).
[¹] I could write an entire, long blog post with my critic, perhaps skeptic, thoughts on the acquisition of Next New Networks by YouTube. Instead, let’s abbreviate and simply say that before, they were a successful independent project, now, they’re Google.