The Internet is filled with ghosts. There are graveyards on the Internet not unlike what we have in physical life: abandoned blogs, discontinued websites, dead links. Mostly these sites are abandoned out of disinterest. However, sometimes the individual has died. What happens to a blog after the blogger dies? A paid hosting service will deactivate an account when payment eventually ceases. What about free services? There the voices of the dead may linger a very long time. Some blogging services may deactivate an account after a period of no activity. Other blogs may last as long as the blogging service exists. If family members don’t know the password, they may be unable to update it and let people know. A ghost blog may linger frozen in time as a testament to an individual’s life. Could it last for centuries?
Even ghosts eventually fade away. How long will any blogging service remain in the blogging business? Sometimes a major Internet presence completely abandons their product. This happened when Yahoo dropped Geocities. Geocities was once one of the major sites in the world. Who could imagine a decade afterward Yahoo would choose to shut it down? Every thought, emotion or idea expressed on Geocities vanished overnight. Like life, information is not immortal.
Could this happen to Facebook one day? Will Facebook cease to exist after singularity eventually arrives? Singularity represents the moment when true artificial intelligence becomes reality. I doubt Facebook will be any different then Geocities when the latest technology renders it obsolete. Except with Facebook, this would be far more serious. Geocities was an ant compared to Facebook. Yet, tomorrow’s artificial intelligence will render both Google and Facebook irrelevant. Hopefully human history, as expressed on the Internet, will have their “ghost” saved on a server somewhere.
An emerging Internet ghost is Yahoo’s Groups. What, you may ask, exactly is a Yahoo Group? Never heard of it? I doubt many people have. Yahoo Groups is an Internet-Ghost-In-Process…abandoned and forlorn, not unlike a desolate, unkempt cemetery. It is filled with dead Groups.
I was once active in Yahoo Groups back in my ghost hunting days. Until Yahoo ruined Groups trying to make it profitable with annoying adds that truly disrupted the experience. So I left participating in their Groups. My own contributions are now phantoms. However, I’m still a member of a few Groups including this one:
This was once a happening Chicago based ghost-hunting Group and it still has activity going on. Most Yahoo Groups are barely alive, but a few still breath against the odds. I suspect Yahoo will get rid of Groups one day, and it will join the realm of the Internet dead.
January 7th, 2012 at 9:48 pm
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January 8th, 2012 at 9:35 am
thats one of the reasons i was so happy to have two blogs! darn it i hope it out lives me years after. otherwise i’ll have to use Blog2Print and turn it into a book and have it locked up somewhere for safe keeping!
January 8th, 2012 at 9:06 pm
I’ve been thinking this matter for a while now…one does find an awful lot of dead links and abandoned blogs these days. Yahoo groups were always funny things though imho!
However not all of the geocities have been lost….some were taken by some clever groups and mirrored… Kept on the internet for the sake of posterity and the fact that the particular site was of interest. One of the groups is http://www.oocities.org/ but I think there are a couple of others that did it.
January 9th, 2012 at 1:06 am
Hi Demaster,
I’ve been wondering what would happen to my blog if a bus hit me. My blog is on a paid hosted site. I put a lot of work into this thing. I’ve read somewhere it is possible to make a duplicate/mirror of a blog on one of the free blogger sites, but keep it private so it won’t appear in the search engines. Duplicate sites are SEO suicide. Then when a bus runs me over, family could make it public and discontinue my hosted blog. I like the idea of my blog outliving me. I’d be an Internet ghost! BOO!
Dave
January 9th, 2012 at 1:24 am
Hi Michelle,
I followed the blog of an older artist/painter (from his bio he was born in 1938). He used to be a contributor in the Blogcatalog discussion forums. Then one day…he vanished. His blog is still out there.
http://notches.blogspot.com/
His last post was November 7. 2009. Then…just silence.
Is he OK? Did just stop blogging or did something bad happen? Is his blog now a ghost?
His last comment on BlogCatalog was on 10/05/10:
Thank you, thank you, folks. Yeah, been a stumbler. Back in January I was diagnosed with an eye problem – macular degeneration (spelling?). Anyway I have been given treatments every two months or so, and it is fairly stabilizing. Thankfully effecting only one eye. Anyway – that, coupled with my eager anticipation to return to my hometown (become a hillbilly again?) has taken me off-track with blogging. But eager to return Right now I am still anticpating the move within the next couple of months, and while sorting through my stuff and preparing for the move, I am also looking to create a website where I can store in organized sections a full lifetime of facing the world via my notes and sketching. Still sober today. Almost 2 and a half years. Day at a time. And enjoying it. And again, thank all of you. Looing forward. Ralph.
I hope he is still ok. He left behind some wonderful artwork. Maybe nobody notices, but I’ve noticed his work. This is an example of a blog that deserves to outlive the creator.
Dave