Internet Technology : Are fewer embarking upon web site ownership - due to facebook and like sites?

[anAfrican]

It's fast getting to the point that i am imagining destee.com not here. I certainly think about it,

don't EVER think that!!!​

as it relates to the enormous amounts of time and cost it requires, that no one else will do if i'm not here ... and that we can't afford to pay someone to do. I don't get paid for any of my time, and no one else will or should work under these conditions.

I do it because i love it ... i love this community

never mind "should"; "want to" just for the love of it ..exactly the reasons for the offers ... which almost turned to begging ... then realized "trust issues" may have fed the reasoning behind the denials ... quit even thinking about begging ... almost walked away ... but still not premium member and that does, actually, kinda hurt ... but not ever as much as the manner/content of the refusals refusals of the offers ..

being just one person doing the work ... with no compensation

weren't never asking "compensation": only for the love of giving ...

it's ok, Love; let it go.



and thanks for doing, being and staying! (although the "brick.and.mortar.destee.com" dream still tastes good! ['sides, somebody prolly needs to replace harpo studios .. with a different agenda, tho] ...)

 

[Gorilla]

I don't think a lot of people who made websites necessarily wanted to be spending their time doing web development. I think they always had a pretty specific goal in mind and are at a point where the numerous freemium or ad supported SaaS products probably meet the needs of 90% of them. They can just sign up for a service that presents a polished experience and they can go directly to sharing photos, being part of a community, writing blog posts, podcasting, sharing videos, or doing any of the other countless activities that are out there.

The younger generation is also doing something interesting when it comes to computing. Their presence is declining on a lot of monolithic services like Facebook and they're moving towards mobile apps that do a single task well, like SnapChat, WhatsApp etc for a lot of reasons. Some of them are pragmatic (e.g ditching text messaging costs especially abroad) and some of them just seem to want something that does a single task well. The Guardian had an interesting article about this a while back:
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/nov/10/teenagers-messenger-apps-facebook-exodus

Progress hasn't been all bad though if you're someone who is really interested in self-hosting or rolling your own website, web app, or mobile app. A lot of tools and libraries are available now to really do some pretty good things on our own. Things have become much more complex, but there are things that can help Say for example you're not a designer, well learn some rough basics, grab a template, and use a CSS framework. It'll look decent enough, especially for personal projects. Not so great at Javascript? No worries try some jQuery. Want to make a full web application? Django, Rails, Sinatra, Flask, Node, and more are all tools that are capable of helping you get there.

It does take some time and effort if you want to host something yourself and you're likely going to have to pay some money to do so. That's a limiting factor when it comes to trying to make more interactive/larger web applications. People have to come up with a way to pay for them and that's not always easy. It's hard to make the case for it to some people when they can just do something like sign up for a forum or join Reddit. The good news is that the barrier at the lower end is still cheap, but now people just have options.