1996: The Year in Review

Content

In 1996, more people began to understand that simply shoveling content onto their website was no more interesting to others as it was to themselves. Luckily for all of us, the costs of even repurposing existing content proved prohibitive for many companies who initially planned to share with us everything we never wanted to know about them. This turned into a lucky break as the dawn of 1996 had companies ambitious to start their own newspapers (primarily about themselves) and keen to put their archives of press releases and corporate memoranda on their sites so that they could share them with the world. As they saw their development costs sky-rocket, they began to pare their plans down to only the essentials, and this meant that these companies concentrated--thankfully--on making their most relevant, helpful information available first, usually never getting around to the rest.

By and large the content on the web now reflects a much more corporate-oriented bent (which is neither better nor worse than the academic bent it reflected before) but neither is yet personal or personally relevant--nor any more interesting, insightful, intriguing, or engaging, and in the coming year, it will need to be to attract and keep a more consumer audience.

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