WEB, STATION: Anti-Portal Propaganda and Software Evolution [1111.1998]

Fred Langa wrote back in July about why some portals are a bad idea. He says:

Some companies just don't belong in the portal business. Expanding to portal status only defocuses what their sites are really about.

Ouch. That really hit home. In my little megalomaniacal quest for fame and fortune on the web, I've been wasting too much time writing about links that really aren't all that important. It's just that adding a one-line link without some commentary really wastes space in the archives.

This is a powerful example of how software can shape behavior. When I could only show one rant at a time, I kept them up for days. When I modified the script to show the last seven rants, I suddenly had the freedom to post two or three a day. Then I wanted to post little things - one liners.. Now that I have the archive, where each rant has its own page, that makes little chunks harder. So now I want to seperate big stuff from little.

The hive (coming soon) will fix that. Then I (or maybe others) can toss a link right on to the front page, with a short description, and with constantly-changing stuff on the front page, I can cool off with link commentary, and save my writing for developing ideas - like this rant.

This is actually similar to Dave Winer's system.. Hmm. Perhaps a taxonomy is in order..