Saturday, October 1, 2016

Websites with an expiration date

Creativity is rampant on the internet. People are always coming up with new ideas for funny memes or collections of photos and other things.
But these websites usually have an expiration date. The joke runs its course or the curator loses interest in the subject.
What happens then is the website either disappears (if someone has to pay web hosting fees) or it becomes a zombie blog that is no longer updated (if it’s on a free blogging platform like Blogger and Tumblr).
Of the 275 websites I’ve highlighted as favorites on Tech-media-tainment, 34 are dead, with the content no longer accessible, and at least 64 are zombie blogs.
That works out to 23% of the blogs I’ve spotlighted are no longer being updated but the content is still available. In many cases, the content hasn’t been refreshed or added to in years. But at least the content is still available (for now) as a time capsule of what was once of interest.
I’ve started and abandoned a couple of online works, so I can relate. (See: One Stop Video and TSA Rants.)
Among the blogs that I previously spotlighted that are now zombie blogs are: The Brokers with Hands on Their Faces Blog, Con Artist Hall of Infamy, Evolution of Soft Drink Cans, Hot Olympic Girls, My Kid Is Gifted, Rappers Doing Normal Shit, What Ridiculous Food Day Is Your Birthday? and, of course, Zombie Dead Blog.
Another example is a website I meant to spotlight, but it only lasted a couple of days.
In July, Jason Shevrin, a media relations person at George Washington University, created a Tumblr blog called Empty Pressers. It featured photos journalists posted on Twitter of empty podiums ahead of press conferences by government officials.
The blog was active for just two days and posted just seven entries.

Photo: Socks the cat from Empty Pressers. 

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