Gonch and I were chatting a bit after the podcast about how traffic to our sites was down this year. Initially he made the assertion that it was competition, but in reality, there are fewer coaster sites than ever. I think that's actually a symptom of the problem, that people aren't as interested as they were back in the old days. I sure miss the days of Millennium Force and Superman, of the ridiculous building craze that Six Flags did.
But the bigger problem, if I just look at my own Web surfing habits, is that I spend a lot more time on sites that simply didn't exist five years ago. I spend a great deal of time on Facebook, able to focus on a much more narrow community of people that I can closely control. I use Google Reader to aggregate the stuff that I'm most interested in reading. Heck, even I don't visit my own sites as much as I used to. There is too much competing for my attention.
That brings me to an interesting realization: That the niche sites that made the Internet so interesting have largely taken a back burner to the bigger picture social networks. And why wouldn't they? The group of "friends" I have on Facebook are far more diverse in their interests than any group of coaster nerds, so why wouldn't I want to engage them more?
It makes me wonder then what the problem is with niche sites. Is it a technical or cultural problem? Seeing as how ad CPM's have actually gone up to partially offset lesser traffic, at least media buyers still think they're relevant. But why spend time at a Buffy fan site when you can share your enthusiasm on Facebook?
Sometimes I wonder how much we can really affect the Internet. The forces at work are much bigger than any of us individually.
No comments yet.