Do people really surf the Net anymore?

Posted on December 13, 2005
Filed Under Computing |

I cannot remember the last time I typed in the URL to my favourite news, tech, or info website. I cannot remember the last time i surfed the web. Freesearch definition of surf: to spend time visiting a lot of websites. The surfing connotation is like surfing on water, going where ever the wave takes you. Imagine someone just bouncing around the interweb.

I don’t really surf websites anymore. The few that I do visit are because they don’t put all the content in their RSS feed, or I followed a link in the RSS feed. So I’m not really surfing, since I’m going to a precise location, extracting any information I find interesting, occasionally blog about it, then close it and proceed to the next new article Vienna throws my way.

This is amazing, because the advent of sydicated feeds changes the way people use the web. Content is pushed too me, instead of me pulling it and having to surf (and spend time visiting a lot of websites). I quickly scan hundreads of headlines at a time from sources about current events, tech news, politics, business news, blogs, photoblogs, podcasts. I find something interesting, i read it… move on to the next story. I’ve started to get bored of watching the news of late, because by 6 or 9pm I already know everything they are going to talk about. So I can skip the first 10-15 and wait for the indepth reports and documentaries, or things that are not just the days headlines. [NOTE: not all news organisations do this, most are just headlines - no depth, just sensationalist headlines - useless depth, just entertainment news - too shallow to use the word depth, just bad.]

How has your interaction with the net changed? What are the impacts of this paradigm shift? What business models will crumble (adwords?)? What new models will appear? Something to think about as I sit hear awake, again.

Comments

2 Responses to “Do people really surf the Net anymore?”

  1. Bobby Kelly on December 14th, 2005 11:10

    Yeah, I found my web habits changed when I started using RSS. Now I don’t need to search for new content and check sites to see if they’ve updated. I’m able to take in more info in less time.

    I think I spend the same amount of time “surfing” the web, but now I’m looking for interesting stuff to subscribe to in my RSS reader.

    I haven’t tried subscribing to search feeds, but it sounds like an even more efficient way of filtering out the noise.

    Terry Heaton talks that stuff here:
    http://donatacom.com/archives/00001150.htm

  2. mhp on December 14th, 2005 14:04

    Bob, thanks for reminding me for the search feeds. I forgot to mention those, as well as email feed from Gmail.

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