TITLE: The Web is More Than The Latest App or Walled Garden AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford DATE: December 17, 2012 3:39 PM DESC: ----- BODY: Anil Dash, on the web we lost:
... today's social networks, they've brought in hundreds of millions of new participants to these networks, and they've certainly made a small number of people rich. But they haven't shown the web itself the respect and care it deserves, as a medium which has enabled them to succeed. And they've now narrowed the possibilities of the web for an entire generation of users who don't realize how much more innovative and meaningful their experience could be.
I've never warmed to Facebook, for much this reason. I enjoy Twitter, but I treat it as a source of ephemera. Anything that I want to last gets cached in a file of links, shared with colleagues or friends by e-mail, or -- best of all -- blogged about. I sometimes wonder if blog readers will weary of finding links to things they've already seen via Twitter, or if Twitter has trained too many of us not to want to read someone's comments on such articles in blog entries. But this seems one of the great and lasting values of a blog, one that will remain even after Facebook and Twitter have gone the way of Usenet and GeoCities. The social web is more, and I want to remain a part of it. -----