This is it, folks, the final post of my Web 2.0 memoir. Thanks for reading over the past 14 months and please consider buying the book. -> After leaving ReadWriteWeb in October 2012, it becomes apparent that the Web 2.0 era is over. I reflect on what the Web 2.0 bubble meant and how the internet industry continues to evolve.

Cybercultural

The End of Web 2.0 — One Bubble Deflates, Another Starts Up

After leaving ReadWriteWeb in October 2012, it becomes apparent that the Web 2.0 era is over. I reflect on what the Web 2.0 bubble meant and how th...

#InternetHistory #Web20

Test: Hi this is a post from Surf, Flipboard’s cool new app.

If you think JavaScript frameworks spit out horrendous code, try editing an epub file in Calibra (it’s XHTML). As well as dealing with mountains of span tags, it took me hours to track down the cause of a bug where numbers in my ebook were formatted differently from the text…the reason, it turned out: one of the meta files had an Arabic language setting! I only discovered this when I looked closer at the settings on my kindle for the book. All part of the fun of being a self-published author :)

Anyone else testing this? https://izzzzi.net/welcome I’m ricmac there if you want to connect.

As we approach 2025, I’ve decided to swap out the word “newsletter” for “website” on Cybercultural. It started out in 2019 as a Substack newsletter, and in January this year I transformed it into an #eleventy website, and over 2024 I’ve built out the website more, folded an older site of mine into Cybercultural (WebDevelopmentHistory), continued creating new articles, etc. Anyway, point is it’s not really a “newsletter” anymore. It’s an indie website, which is what I’ll call it going forward.

Well they’ve finally done it — you can now follow Mastodon users from Threads (with some restrictions; see screenshot). Easiest way to test this is to search for your Threads account here, like the latest post, then check back on Threads. Follow your Mastodon self from there. Once this gets 100% functionality, I will hopefully be able to start pointing Threads users to my Mastodon profile.

1/ The “thousand flowers will bloom” lie of Web 2.0. In my latest Cybercultural post, I wrote: “…the Enshittocene represents the inverse of the renaissance that was Web 2.0. Whereas Web 2.0 promised that a thousand flowers would bloom, in the form of web applications and user-generated content, what ended up happening was the opposite: a handful of internet platforms became dominant and throttled innovation.” I came across a couple of “thousand flowers” citations from Web 2.0 Google & Twitter…

Here's my take on the #enshittification of internet technology over the 2010s, based on the word @npub1fdrp...lvhs coined. I've added "developer enshittification" to the mix (see: React).

Cybercultural

The Enshittocene: How the Internet Got Worse in the 2010s

The 2010s was a period of the internet colonized by platforms, which caused 'enshittification' of web products. Users and developers both suffered,...

However, I do end on a note of optimism: the decentralized web as represented by the fediverse, Mastodon and potentially Bluesky. "It's a new world for those who have chosen to leave the Enshittocene behind them. Won't you join us?"