There's
no doubt that "social networking" is hot. With sites like Friendster,
Match.com, Flickr, Facebook, and del.icio.us burning up the newswires
(and sucking up the traffic), it's hard to talk to anyone these days
about Web development without the topic coming up.
And if the topic's hot now, it's only going to get hotter with
the recent beta launch of Ning.com, Marc Andreessen's latest baby.
Billed as a "playground" for social networking applications, it
provides a free platform for developers who want to create their own
social networking apps. But does everyone (or every company) need to incorporate
social networking into their sites? Just because it's popular does it
mean that it's always a good thing? Probably not. While sites like
Flickr and del.icio.us have blazed new trails by combining
user-contributed content with social connections, their success doesn't
necessarily translate into the commercial space. And while it's
tempting for developers (and their clients) to want to jump onto the
virtual bandwagon of development fads, it's important to examine what
you're trying to accomplish before hopping on board with new
technology. What might seem cool and cutting edge today might seem
pretty darn silly next quarter. So to help you save money, development time, and client
relations, today we present the list of the Top 10 Web Development Fads
of the Past as a public service and a reminder about what happens when
fads get the best of us. Try not to cringe and remember to forgive
yourself if you participated in any of these.
1. Portals: One of the most irritating trends of the late '90s was the
move to make every site a "portal." From corporate sites to publishers
to personal home pages, this fad took the Web by storm. News tickers,
stock quotes, personalization, forced registration, Web search boxes,
link lists…no content was too much (or too irrelevant) in this "more is
more" trend. The base of the idea was good—provide content to make your
site "sticky" and drive repeat visitors—but the executions were often
unusable and the sheer number of "portals" made competition fierce.
Besides, why do you need to know the weather when all you need is the
link to customer service.
2. Splash Pages: Ugh. Gag. Barf. Everyone hated these things (so expertly parodied at the famous "Skip Intro" site),
yet for some reason there was a period of time when having a fancy
Flash intro page to your site was all the rage. Unfortunately "rage"
was also the reaction many users had when they had to sit through
interminable rasterbatory gimmicks to get to the content they were
looking for. Good riddance.
 Trying to control digital content is insane. Click here to read more.
3. "Community": Back in 1997, McKinsey's John Hagel wrote a book called
Net Gain which contained the famous quote that "community precedes
commerce." Realizing that loyal customers constituted a "community"
wasn't a bad idea, but the execution of what many sites took away from
the quote definitely was. All of a sudden sites started sprouting
"community" sections in an effort to get users to chat, hang out, and
generally become part of the "community." Unfortunately not many did.
Who wants to define their social group by the kind of soap they use?
4. Page counters: Who cares how many visitors your site has? Not that
these things have gone away, but there was a time when no
self-respecting site seemed complete without some annoying
odometer-looking GIF announcing how many people had beat you to the
site.
5. Homepages: There was a time when no cybercitizen could hold their
head up without having their own "homepage" filled with bad family
photos, resumes, descriptions of hobbies, and personal details that
nobody but the homepage designer's mother cared about. The trend
extended into the commercial space with companies encouraging visitors
to make their site their "homepage." Yeah. Right. Of course, today we have blogs, but that's another story.
6. MIDI songs, animated GIF icons, divider bars, and other garbage: One
of the most obnoxious fads was the one where people felt compelled to
decorate their sites like a trailer park Christmas tree. Visitors were
often first assaulted by an endless MIDI song loop and then forced to
wait as animated GIFs of letters mailing themselves and obnoxious
background patterns loaded. If you were really
unlucky your wait might have been rewarded by the "man digging in a
pile of dirt" "under construction" icon that was popular around the
same time.
7. Guestbooks: Why anyone thought that asking visitors to leave their
name and a comment in a virtual "guestbook" was a good idea is beyond
any rational explanation (and why people actually did it also defies
logic). But there was a time when "guestbooks" were common. Not only
were they annoying, but they were often a feeding ground for spambots
who pounced on them to suck up e-mail addresses left behind.
8. E-Postcards: Nothing prompts copycats like wild success, so it was
no surprise that after the early success of BlueMountain.com everyone
began to think that e-postcards were a good idea. While many sites were
ethical about what they did with the e-mail addresses "e-cards" were
sent to, many weren't and "friends" who got a postcard often found
themselves bombarded with spam.
9. Mobile access/mobile content/WAP: Remember when everyone thought
that the mobile internet revolution was just around the corner? After
NTTDoCoMo's success in the 90's with i-Mode in Japan and multiple
modest successes with 3G content in Europe, it seemed as if everyone
figured that U.S. consumers would be surfing the Web with their cell
phones next. Developers scrambled to make their content available to
WAP browsers and handheld devices only to find that most U.S. users
didn't care, preferring to take their content in the comfort of their
desktops. The dot.bomb crash put the final nail in the coffins of many
of the startups that popped up to serve this market that never
developed.
10. Awards: Oh the "award" banners! At one point, no self-respecting
site was complete without a dozen or so award banners announcing their
worth to the world. Unfortunately most "award" sites were really just
thinly veiled scams designed to capture cash via entry fees or vanity
sites for folks who just liked to feel that they were the final
arbiters of taste. Eventually folks began to realize that earning "Site
of the Hour" on "Billy Bob's Big List o' Links n' Stuff" wasn't that
much of an honor and most of these things went away. Good riddance.
So goodbye to the fads of the past! But what about the future? I'll
cover that next week in my Top Ten List of Future Fads. Until then,
update your homepages, keep tweaking your mobile content, sign those
guestbooks, personalize your portals, keep clicking those pagecounters,
and don't forget to update your animated GIFs. Oh, and if anyone wants
a "Big Sean's Super L33T Link List Site" award banner, just send me an
e-mail along with your $20 application fee. | 
