

The Tragic Death of Practically Everything - dhotson
http://technologizer.com/2010/08/18/the-tragic-death-of-practically-everything/

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nlavezzo
I think it's worth noting that most of those stories are random blog sites,
which are kind of allowed (expected?) to post stupid, sensationalist stuff
fairly regularly. The WIRED article was a cover story on a major technology
publication, and went beyond opinion and used a totally misleading graph (
[http://www.boingboing.net/2010/08/17/is-the-web-really-
de.ht...](http://www.boingboing.net/2010/08/17/is-the-web-really-de.html) ).
The WIRED article is a few levels above those links in terms of stupidity.

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dingle_thunk
Breaking News: Unnecessarily hyperbolic and speculative tech news sites are
dead!

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Marticus
Sensationalist graphs, unfortunately, live on.

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66-75-63-6b
The chart Wired provides is nice, but doesn't really tell the full story. It
doesn't tell the story they're writing, and it doesn't give enough information
to really work out what's going on.

Looking at that chart, I do not see an increase in direct services traffic,
such as the facebook apps they mention in the articles. I see an increase in
Video traffic, specifically, eating up the other services. This is not the
same thing. We need more information, anyway: is this video direct streaming?
Is it video accessed over web sites like youtube? If the latter is the case,
does it really count as a separate category? Why put services and types of
content on the same graph, anyway?

It also doesn't tell the whole story. I'd like to see a similar chart of total
data transfer. Obviously the total amount of Internet data transfer has
skyrocketed over the same period, and we already know the way the proportions
work out... But for all we know, web usage is growing in absolute terms. Maybe
it's not growing as fast as video-specific web traffic, but it's still
growing. Besides, technology to effectively store and transmit video in place
in websites is relatively new. It should be no surprise that it's piece of the
Internet pie is still growing!

Overall; kind of bullshit. I like the idea that non-http services are taking
over the Internet, but the numbers Wired presents don't validate that one way
or the other.

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StavrosK
I can't believe people are still arguing about this. Wired made some bullshit
graph, whatever, why do we need to prove them wrong? They have their opinion,
and it's not going to kill the web itself, so let's just leave it at that.

This is precisely the reason why Wired wrote that article: They knew it would
get them publicity, and that's what the "X is DEAD" articles are for. Just
trolling.

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sprout
The problem is the graph is beyond misleading, it is false. It purports to
show a decline in web traffic, when what it really shows is a decline in web
traffic relative to other protocols (including video, which is a further
mistake since a lot of video often comes over the web, and can't be mutually
exclusive as the graph presents it.)

In absolute terms however, the web is still growing, which is why it's not
just a matter of opinion.

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muyyatin
Definitely liked how it ended with vinyl alive.

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vic_nyc
This has been posted before recently. The title is just something flashy to
attract attention, but there is no real substance to the claim that the "web"
is dead (let alone that everything is dead), it's just that the web is
undergoing some logical transformations, as it evolves. Sounds to be like
Wired is either becoming desperate for traffic, or it wants to become act more
and more like a tabloid instead of an intelligent news source.

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motters
They missed the death of blogging and Facebook, and of course the death of
Microsoft.

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CWuestefeld
Ummmm. Microsoft and Facebook were both in that list. So was RSS, if that
might count for blogging.

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bad_user
People have waaay too much time on their hands :)

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ghotli
This really didn't add anything tangible to the discussion.

