Internet - Things I miss

You can't talk old net without mentioning Myspace.  I've included Bebo too as that's where I went after Myspace was sold and started to die.

What was great about both was the level of customisation.  MySpace taught many to code with the HTML profile integration.  You could add GIFs, music, blogs, videos, top friends etc.  Bebo added even more, you could send luv three times every day.  Luv was shown on your profile and served as a status symbol.  The more you had the more popular you were.  Bebo also had a whiteboard.  A Ms paint like app that allowed you to add a drawing onto your friends profile.

Where's the customisation now?  You can change your profile picture and a cover picture other than that everything is the same for everyone.  Boring.

Warcraft and RuneScape weren't for me.  I'm not really too sure why, I just never liked them.

But I did like text based ones.  I was obsessed with a mafia based one called ny-mafia.  You're level up your gangster, join teams or even run your own.  Kill other players it was great.  It also had forms where you could talk about the game.  A newspaper that told player's what happened that week (this group did X, another boss was killed and this rising star is the richest player in the game.). It also had customisable profiles.  Players decorated there's with signatures.  Photoshopped image's of anime characters, gangsters, rappers or anything really with cool backgrounds and their username displayed in all it's glory.

This is how I learned Photoshop.  I used it to make money for the game and quickly rose to high heights within the game.  Impressive for a teen with limited internet access.

I later joined a ninja based one as I was a big Naruto fan.  The community wasn't the same so I didn't last long.

I miss the sense of community and working towards a common goal even if it was just to be the best mafia family. I think the secret is keeping the group size low.  Once they grow too large there's too many sub groups that conflict with each other.

I'd come home from school, open up msn and talk for hours to everyone.  Nowadays I'm lucky to chat online a few times each week.

Maybe it's just me, but I'm pretty confident that it's not.v chatting online just isn't the same. I don't know how this could be fixed.  There's so many conversation apps and none offer that happiness I use to feel with msn.

Maybe it's not the new apps.  Maybe It's us.  I would talk for hours about nothing.  Nowadays noone really wants to do that.  Get to the point and let me get on with whatever it was I was doing before you said hi.  Maybe this is growing up.  I guess kid's still talk nonsense just like we did when we were younger.

YouTube use to allow you to rate videos out of 5.  It then moved to good/bad.  Now it will only show you how many likes the video gets and hides dislikes.

If something is bad it's nice to know others also think the same.  Seeing insane point's getting a thousand likes just creates an internal panic/confusion.  If all these people like it maybe I'm wrong.  If you could see that five million also disliked it you'd feel far happier about your take.

Thing's are rarely black and white, hence why I liked the Star system.  Encouraging black and white thinking with the like/dislike was a bad move.  Like/dislike to I'll only show you the likes was an even worse move.