Surfing the internet had become more like wading through junk mail. For every useful or informative site I find myself browsing, I first endure 3 – 5 useless sites. By useless I mean its either 5 years old, attempting to sell you a product or service, or it falls into some other class of marketing bullshit.
My first gripe is that so many of the sites on the internet haven’t been updated in 5 years, others even longer since an update… I propose a fix for this, which is especially important given the ever dwindling supplies of .com domain names (see the statistics here), “Domain Reclamation.” I mean you figure, we lease our domain names, thus we should upkeep them just like we would an apartment or any other leased object. Why not evict domain name holders? Now before we dance down the long slippery slope, let me clarify- by evict I mean if your site has not been updated in more than two years (meaning by your second renewal) you receive an e-mail saying “update it or lose it.” No taking it to give it to the e-marketeer willing to pay more than poor Joe Public, just removing neglected sites from unsuitable homes and reselling them to a good home that will tend them.
As for sales and marketing, they are annoying… But necessary to fuel our capitalist economy, if nobody bought Chuck Norris‘ latest home fitness machine or Billy Mays‘ new acid that eats the linoleum off floors, our economy might tank. What does annoy me is the growing number of sites that try to charge you membership fees to read articles and obtain information, for example the NY Times and various library services. Now moving porn sites to a .xxx domain would free up a lot of great names (like Tossed Salad for example) and make keeping your child away from it an easier task.
Regardless, if it’s this bad after 10 or 12 years, what will the net look like in another 10 to 15?
