The Aisle of Alternatives

Anatomy of Modern Social Media

Anatomy of Modern Social Media

Creating our own web pages nowadays

Thankfully, it is still possible to create web pages nowadays and host them for free. At its core, the web hasn’t changed: we can still write web pages using the same programming language than in the 90’s: HTML.. Although most traffic happens on a few big social media sites, there exist many, many independent websites, hosted by individuals, community or small companies. For example, Neocities was created in 2013 as a revival of Geocities, and many people have their own digital garden there

Neocities is both a place to build and host webpages, but also a platform to discover multiple personal sites
Neocities is both a place to build and host webpages, but also a platform to discover multiple personal sites
Melonking.net is a website maintained by an artsit Daniel and foster a whole community
A personal, contemporary geocities site, where the autho is sharing all kinds of resources, from music, art-works, etc.
Often created by teenagers and young adults, they are also a way to explore the early web aesthetics

Social webpages

While personal webpages can be created and hosted everywhere, the challenge is often accessing them. Indeed, one of social media key feature is to list personal profiles and help discover content we are interested in. The Internetphonebook.net works just like the old yellow pages books. In the book, many personal sites are listed, along with a number. On the dial-a-site page, you can type in a number and go visit that page.

Screenshot of the dial a site section on the Internet phonebook’s site.
Screenshot of the dial a site section on the Internet phonebook’s site.
Picture of the inside of the Internet’s phonebook
Picture of the inside of the Internet’s phonebook

Going further

  • Alternative Social media, like Mastodon or PixelFed are decentralised: instead of all the user accounts and content being centralized in a single company’s data centers, like Instagram or Tiktok, everyone can host a server, where users are free to register an account.

The Prototyping Room

The Prototyping Room