Mobile 'Deep Links' and the Fate of the Web 26
An anonymous reader writes: Mobile developers call the links they're forging between apps "deep links," but so far the whole idea seems to be more about marketing than deepening understanding. This essay over at Backchannel argues that we still haven't delivered on the original promise of links online — the idea of enabling people to build and share "cathedrals of context." Quoting: "The people who invented the link saw it as a tool for relating ideas in illuminating ways—for making conceptual leaps and connecting disparate thoughts. If these visionaries had achieved their aim, the kind of tech-cultural amnesia represented by the recycling of the term 'deep links' shouldn't have been possible, two decades into the Web era. The links with true depth that they envisioned would have made sure of that."
relating, illuminating, connecting (Score:2)
Sigh... (Score:2)
For a second I thought they meant these [xkcd.com] deep links.
That may have been the original goal... (Score:3)
...but things change, and the primary purposes of links now, on almost all platforms, is for one primary reason: to generate income.
You click a link, it goes to a page with an ad, which, when served and clicked on, will generate income, allowing the owners to pay for the website. While some websites are purely informational, most websites generate information in order to make money, and most of that money is made by people clicking links.
Re: (Score:3)
Beside, people are suing for deep linking because it subverts their add revenue
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C... [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
I remember the early web, and how I'd be reading a very interesting article, and how hyperlinks would take me to another, related, and just as interesting article, and so on, and so on... Text with links, on a soothing amber screen - I loved it.
Then I remember the commercial gold rush, and how I hoped to god these people would all quickly lose money, then disappear. It's been quite a while since I clicked on a link and found something interesting on the other side. Oh, well...
The whole web has been a squandered opportunity (Score:5, Interesting)
"Deep links" are only the tip of the iceberg.
As Alan Kay pointed out almost 20 years ago (!) when the web get reinvented twice over it STILL kept missing its true potential.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Right now the web has been relegated to content consumption, posting stupid obvious questions [wikipedia.org], posting controversial material to get eyeballs (clickbait), trying to get as many clicks as possible by splitting articles up into N pages, or even bullshit like only liking to articles on the same site. /glares at Phoronix
The web has become a clusterfuck of bad design and worse implementations.
When you have standards misspelling referrer in the HTTP header standard [wikipedia.org] it is depressing that everything about the web is literally half-assed.
What's new? :-/
Re:The whole web has been a squandered opportunity (Score:5, Insightful)
What is the web you speak of? Is that the Facebook or the Twitter? I'm so confused.
A bit of sarcasm there but it does feel to me as though we've taken a step backwards. We've gone from the walled garden of services like AOL and Compuserve to the walled garden of Facebook and Twitter. Like AOL, there's nothing forcing people to use the Internet in this manner, except for sheer size and inertia. There are now countless examples of businesses, recreational groups, fundraisers, and so forth whose sole online presence consists of their Facebook and/or Twitter pages. If they bother to maintain a webpage it's hopelessly out of date. Need updates about our activity? Like us on Facebook! Have a question? Post it on our wall! Good luck trying to e-mail us.
Besides the sheer annoyance (not all of us wish to be sucked in Facebook's ecosystem) factor there are consequences here for free speech. Mediums like Usenet or IRC were resistant to attempts at censorship, they embodied the internet as most of us knew it. The contrast with large corporations like Facebook or Google is depressing; they're compelled to engage in censorship for legal (try Googling Tienanmen Square in the PRC) reasons, to say nothing of their tendency to cave to public pressure and censor unpopular viewpoints, or even to behave like our nanny (Facebook's policy towards non-sexual topless photos of females)
At the rate we're going I'd be surprised if anyone remembers the "internet" in another ten years.
Re: (Score:2)
Concur 100%!!
I think your line says it all:
We've gone from the walled garden of services like AOL and Compuserve to the walled garden of Facebook and Twitter.
The hypocrisy over the female nipple is a perfect example! The Huffington Post did a good writeup:
#FreeTheNipple: Facebook Changes Breastfeeding Mothers Photo Policy
* http://www.huffingtonpost.com/... [huffingtonpost.com]
I wish I could find it again (Score:3)
It's been at least 20 years since I saw the best web page ever. Very simple: the lyrics to Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire", with each term linked to yet another external site discussing its history.
Re: (Score:1)
When I come across something that is the best web page ever, at least I bookmark it! http://www.zombo.com/ [zombo.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, I'm pretty sure I did -- it's probably still in my Compuserve account -- do you remember when e-mail addresses had a comma?
And besides, who'd have thought that the best web-site ever was from 1995? I sure didn't know that at the time.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Nah, that's not the one. That's pretty concise.
Imagine just the lyrics, each one linked far far away. So one term might be to a wikipedia article, another to some russian site, a third to a research centre in bolivia, a fourth to a county web-site in the middle of nowhere, a fifth to a boxing club, etc..
I can read your page in 20 minutes. But that site in 1995 took days to read -- because each word was another site with new interests.
But this was in 1995, back when "surfing" the web was actually possible
Answer: Web apps (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
For those who don't care to read the long article, the problem is that phone apps can't link into each other very easily, the way websites can. The answer to this problem and so many others is just to make your phone app a web app, instead of a native one.
Problem is getting your intended audience to type the address for your web app. It has to be well places in search results to deserve be turned into a link.
The solution to that, and a fairly obvious one that Jobs must have chosen to ignore, is to allow web apps inside the App Store complete with "installing" a clickable icon on your phone desktop. Fit right in with the vision he was claimed to have had in the iPhone 1.0 days and iOS still supports saving a web app to a desktop icon.
Lucky for Apple that they went the route of proprietary API apps instead or else switching between iPhone and Android devices would have a whole lot less friction.
Re: (Score:2)
It's actually easier than that. Android can figure out how to open your links either in the browser or the app based on context. So make your app handle some links on your site, publish those links as a means to link to your app, and then when they are loaded by a browser other than your app, redirect to your play store url.
Symmetrical Web (Score:2)
When I am on a desktop machine, SeaMonkey is my browser of choice, because I still believe in the old ideal of a symmetrical web.
Every machine on the web should be client/server, or at least connected to and capable of creating web content based on an open standard. A 'browser' should have an 'edit' button on the left most window, and 'edit' should open the wysiwyg html editor (Seamonkey is still like that! Though you're usually editing a new local copy of the content).
Instead we mostly get herded to leave