ViralNova acquired for $100M, while The Dissolve shuts down
motherboard.vice.com
motherboard.vice.com
The problem with The Dissolve is that you have to decide to go there to engage with it. Most people won't do that.
Value-added content is explicitly designed to be slotted in anywhere on the whole Internet. Nobody decides to engage with that stuff; it just shows up, like a banner ad.
Same here, I thought it would stop after the first ironic paragraph, but when it went on and on I couldn't stand it any longer
So let's say for the purposes of arguing, between the TPP, whois privacy potentially going away, and all the other crazy/terrible ideas out there right now, things get really bad? Are you guys okay with starting over from square one?
I'm all for a fresh start.
It's not too hard to get away from the social cable TV news like Facebook if you try. The Internet is still as subculture-focused and underground as it always was, you just have to dig a little deeper these days. There are still phreaking groups on IRC. There are still anon remailer nets. Ham radio is still a thing. x86 disassemblers are still useful. Soldering is still a valuable skill.
It's just now, there are a few generations of us out there and the barriers to entry are very low for the Internet at large. Don't give up.
So it's no surprise that a dumb and entertaining website would be so profitable - it appeals to a maximum number of users, most of which don't think twice before clicking an ad or making a purchase, either...
That is, to me, the core problem in the article. It seems to suggest that Dissolve deserved to be given money since other less worthy sites are being acquired for millions.
That's not how the Internet works. The 20th century "highbrow" journalist enjoyed a certain income because he had a monopoly on access to media. A widely read newspaper only needed one film critic. But on the Web, any group of people can start a site like Dissolve.
It's not a special privilege reserved to media elite, and that seems to annoy the author: Dissolve had "Pitchfork credentials", which apparently implies that it would have deserved financial success based on that association.
It's actually an enjoyable read, but the idea that a site with some movie reviews on it is so much more high brow than Viralnova is hilarious. It wasn't that long ago movies were considered the lowbrow medium and I imagine some writer was whining about how opera was no longer getting its due.
> The funny thing is that Dissolve probably had everything a niche content farm needs to be successful.
> But you can’t really justify a ‘team’ of writers producing long content that doesn’t even #perform by today’s content economy standards.
> A site like ViralNova demonstrates just how a generalist content site ruined the web.
[rant]
Articles like this make me want to scream: "your metrics for 'quality' are defined by your philosophy!" Your standards (metrics) are based on your values. Your values, which are hierarchical, are based on your fundamentals. Your fundamentals = your philosophy.
A crime boss rules his neighborhood by threatening people with violence unless they pay extortion. He grows rich in terms of money. His large influence is based on force. For those who fundamentally value quantity of money or influence, by their standards, he has a quality and successful business. For those who fundamentally value honesty or the non-aggression principle [1] in their hierarchy of values as more important, he has a low quality and unsuccessful business.
No, sites like ViralNova haven't ruined the web and, no, I'm not conflating content farms and extortion. ViralNova is giving people want they want. Just as contemporary art is a reflection of the prevailing philosophy [2], so is ViralNova a reflection of ubiquitous standards that trends, "hotness," and money are morally proper reflections of value in and of themselves. To paraphrase a famous book [3], "lowbrow" content is not the root of all evil killing the Internet. You must ask what is at the root of content. Until people start experiencing and learning alternative philosophies, their values won't change. If you want to change the Web and raise the intellectual "bar," you need to focus on the philosophies behind the metrics that define "successful" - not the metrics themselves.
[/rant]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-aggression_principle
Can anyone suggest a more representative title? Edit: I've taken a crack at it, but we'd be happy to replace it with something better.
The people who invented it, who wanted a way for scientists to access mainframes using a single network instead of having to use a different network for each different big computer.
Oh, you mean scientists can still do things like that, and that cat GIFs don't prevent it? Shut your mouth!
If, as you indicate yourself, the Internet could still be used for science whether or not it also delivers videos of cats, then why would scientists have fooled themselves into thinking the Internet must be 'highbrow'?
Did they use a 'highbrow' telephone system before that? Did they use 'highbrow paper' while the hoi polloi read their garbage dailies? No, the Internet is a tool just as paper and telecommunications were.
What people do with that tool is up to them, but the tool itself won't raise the nature of discourse just by being, anymore than a really nice socket wrench will magically make the beams and struts of a building stronger.
I'm glad the title was revised again because the previous version was practically a contradiction in terms.
Such innovation. Many wow.