[thelist] bigger hosting - a trend? (fwd)

[Seb]

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Sometime around 19:13 08/01/2002, martin.p.burns at uk.pwcglobal.com did 
verily sayeth:


>A couple of things:
>*) Sure, the tools available are now making it much easier for
>     individuals to self-publish on all kinds of sites, but I think much of
>     the resulting traffic comes from friends and families.

This is pretty much how traffic for most of todays larger indie sites 
started. Examples: slashdot, kuro5hin, evolt.org

I'm not saying that self-publishing is better than any other route, but 
this is where most non-business viral marketing comes from. Once a tiny 
site starts attracting links from bigger sites, traffic doesn't drop back 
to previous levels when the link disappears, assuming the content is 
compelling.

>*) How does your thinking tie up with the research showing that usage
>     is being concentrated in fewer sites, not diversifying to lots of small
>     independent content sites?

Oh I agree, the majority of internet traffic probably is concentrated in a 
few big sites. I for one hit slashdot, evolt.org, kuro5hin, bbc news and 
theregister about 20 times a day each. But that doesn't mean I don't visit 
sinfest.net, userfriendly.org, little-gamers.com, members.evolt.org/djc, 
penny-arcade.com, and even easyweb.co.uk on a fairly frequent basis.

I'm not saying the majority of internet traffic is being directed to 
smaller sites, just enough to cause many of these sites to reach the 
critcal point where free hosting/space is no longer sufficient to their 
needs. Like my site (http://seb.gotadsl.co.uk), which went from about 300 
page views/month to 1500 page view/month from October to December. Not a 
lot, I grant you, but seeing as I started in September with about 40 page 
views, I'm reasonably pleased. In December, the vast majority of those 
views were links from google, and a disproportionate amount were for a tiny 
article I wrote praising the Ericsson T68 to high heaven. No word of mouth, 
just incredibly fortunate google rankings. And those people keep coming 
back, though I can't for the life of me work out why.


Seb.

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