I remember when I first started using the web in the early 90’s. Web sites were quite ugly with blinking text, slapped together images, and unstyled text. But in those days, we weren’t too bothered by that. There was an excitement about the possibilities of all the information that could soon be available on the web. With the slowness of modem connections at the time, I thought that article-based web sites (or online magazines as I would have said then) was where the action was going to be.
I guess looking back, I was pretty naive not to see that broadband was inevitable and the web was not going to be a great repository of articles but an active social network. I had thought that urls were too nerdy and would prevent nontechnical folks from using the internet directly rather than going through a more user-friendly website such as AOL or at the time, Prodigy.
I wasn’t completely wrong about the impact of article-based web sites. The print media today seems close to extinction unless it can reinvent itself online.
I thought that Clay Shirky wrote a very interesting essay about the future of TV and I think that his observations apply equally well to the print media:
The most watched minute of video made in the last five years shows baby Charlie biting his brother’s finger. (Twice!) That minute has been watched by more people than the viewership of American Idol, Dancing With The Stars, and the Superbowl combined. (174 million views and counting.)
Some video still has to be complex to be valuable, but the logic of the old media ecosystem, where video had to be complex simply to be video, is broken. Expensive bits of video made in complex ways now compete with cheap bits made in simple ways. “Charlie Bit My Finger” was made by amateurs, in one take, with a lousy camera. No professionals were involved in selecting or editing or distributing it. Not one dime changed hands anywhere between creator, host, and viewers. A world where that is the kind of thing that just happens from time to time is a world where complexity is neither an absolute requirement nor an automatic advantage.
Wikipedia has demonstrated the force that article-based web sites can have. It has also demonstrated the power of crowdsourcing as an important source of content creation. Recently, Huffington Post has been attracting lots of attention as it has risen rapidly in traffic and readership.
Nothing to my mind speaks better to the changing state of the print media than a list of the top article-based sites. The list below is based on US unique visitors as estimated by Quantcast. I am also excluding sites that do not focus primarily on articles such as Facebook, Yahoo, Google, AOL, and Microsoft.
Here’s the top 20 list for June 18, 2010:
- Wikipedia (75M)
- Blogspot (58M)
- Blogger.com (52M)
- Answers.Com (47M)
- About.Com (45M)
- eHow (44M)
- WordPress (30M)
- Huffington Post (26M)
- imdb (21M)
- cnn.com (20M)
- webmd (18M)
- Associated Content (16M)
- NYTimes.com (15M)
- cnet.com (15M)
- bbc.co.uk (15M)
- tmz.com (15M)
- people.com (14M)
- HubPages (13M)
- WashingtonPost.com (13M)
- examiner.com (13M)
A list like this is a bit deceiving. NYT owns about.com, Associated Content is owned by Yahoo, and Blogger consists of both Blogspot (for readers) and Blogger (for writers). It also doesn’t tell you which sites are on the rise, on the decline, or staying roughly in the same spot. Still, it is very interesting to note the new names that are appearing along side the New York Times, Washington Post, BBC, People, and CNN.
I think it is appropriate to end this blog post with one more quote from Clay Shirky in the same article that I quoted before:
When ecosystems change and inflexible institutions collapse, their members disperse, abandoning old beliefs, trying new things, making their living in different ways than they used to. It’s easy to see the ways in which collapse to simplicity wrecks the glories of old. But there is one compensating advantage for the people who escape the old system: when the ecosystem stops rewarding complexity, it is the people who figure out how to work simply in the present, rather than the people who mastered the complexities of the past, who get to say what happens in the future.
HubPages Blog 
This is such a good post because it highlights the changes that are going on in print media as well as article base websites. I have noticed the shift in what is considered news today compared to 10 or 20 years ago. It is more of an instant gratification when it comes to how people consume information and share on the web.
I am happy to see Hubpages in the list of top 20 article base sites, it is definitely going to be a source of articles that can be referenced by universities, corporations and local communities for decades to come.
Thanks Larry for sharing this insight with us.
When you combine article based sites and the new trends in e-books and e-readers, I believe you see a new level of content democratization occuring. E-reader technology is currently dominated by book store chains. How long will it be before publishers try and cut out the bookstores and an independent force will eventually cut out the publishers? I believe a direct pipleline from writer to reader is inevitable and will be faster than anyone is predicting.
The new question will be how will readers find the writers they want to read. I’m thinking what is the role that places like HP will play?
I hope hubpages rank will increasing to 10.
So large media companies aren’t going extinct – they’re buying in to online properties and can serve a dual purpose: a broader audience on the Web and a more focused audience in print . . . wait, or is it a more focused on the Web and a focused audience in print.
Hey, that’s great. Glad we’re so visible, 13M! Woo.
As soon as I saw the web I saw the destruction of “normal” print media, but even when I was dialing into BBSes I thought it was the cats meow.
It seems only a few months since you celebrated getting into the top 100. Now you are at 18!
That is growth!
Well done for creating a platform people want to use.
Two words: iPad syndication.
Wow, it’s amazing to see how HP has grown! thank you , Mr. Larry for once again sharing such awesome information. HP is awesome! 🙂
Here’s a link to a recent short article about the the effect of the Internet on writing and publishing.
Seems to me that HubPages offers a lot more possibilities for writing articles. Movie reviews on HubPages can be much more interesting than print reviews because of the opportunity to include video trailers, photos of the actors, links to bios of the actors as well as text. When I see a good movie I frequently sit down and compose text for a Hub while the movie is fresh in my mind. I may let the text sit over night, read reviews by other reviewers whose judgment I respect to compare my take with theirs and sometimes link them below mine which are usually shorter. Then I look for a trailer or excerpt video on YouTube and add that and then some photos of the principal actors. I may ad links to Wikipedia entries on the actors also. The reader may quickly read the text only if he’s in a hurry, or he may watch the video trailer and read the biographies of the actors and other reviews I’ve linked. Preparing a movie review hub doesn’t take very long, and it provides the reader a better basis for deciding whether to invest a couple of hours watching the movie than a traditional print review.
The revolution is just beginning in writing and publishing using integral and linked videos, images, sound, and other effects along with text which has been made possible by the Internet using HubPages and other software.
Keep up the great work!