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It's almost like being back in 1996 and there is still money to be made

Back in 1996 Steve and I connected to the Net for the very first time. I guess compared to many people we were late starters but we didn't waste time being surfers.

After about two weeks we discovered Geocities and found how easy it was to build a website of our own. Well I guess compared to the HTML editors we have today it wasn't so easy but it sure seemed to be and if the only way you could get a website was to code by hand then that was fine and Geocities would help you with that.

Geocities went on to be sold to Yahoo for lots of money and it would be easy for webmasters to think that perhaps the appeal of Geocities has faded away but that is definitely not the case.

Not all that long ago Google introduced Google Page Creator and gave people some great tools to build their own websites that Google hosts for free. About the same time a number of similar sites began to appear. Sitekreator and Synthasite are just two that have taken the Geocities idea and developed it further.

Weebly is the latest to hit the net with a similar idea and it really does look good because it allows you to integrate features like Google Maps and Flickr and it's all done an Ajax interface that allows site builders to drag and drop all the features they want to use.

But there seems to be one slight problem. Once again we're seeing a great idea developed by people who seem to be showing that they really don't understand how the real world works. It's something I've talked about before in other places and it really does bug me.

You see, Weebly produces sites that are really not search engine friendly and it is the same with so many of the latest and greatest content management systems. These programs seem to be designed by people who can't think beyond the limits of their programming experience. Instead of saving pages with file names that will attract search engines they keep on saving them with file names that have no search engine appeal at all.

I suppose that experienced webmasters should be happy about that because it tends to reduce the amount of competition we have to face for good search engine placement. And part of me is happy about that but part of me just gets frustrated that the coders don't understand the facts of life as they apply to the Internet.

However, grumping about poor search engine optimization isn't the whole point of this column. The fact that site creators seem to be making a comeback raises another interesting point.

Site creators were big back in 1996 when we didn't have buzz words like 'Web 2.0' and yet they were very popular and the leading site creator of that time was sold to Yahoo for a lot of dollars. I fully expect to see Weebly and maybe those others that I mentioned sold to some bigger company in the not too distant future as, once again, people are drawn in to building personal and special interest websites.

Weebly and the others will be very attractive to any big company that wants to break into the Web 2.0 space and doesn't have a foothold there already. That's all very fine for right now but what about the future?

Is what we're seeing at the moment simply a recast of what was popular in 1996 and what might we draw from that? Could it be as simple as looking at what was popular in say 1998 and giving that a quick coat of Web 2.0 paint?

If it is, and you can pinpoint something that was popular in 1998, then perhaps you too can jump in and work something up to the point where it starts to become popular with people on the Net. From there it shouldn't be hard to monetize it by selling it to someone bigger than you.

It's an interesting thought because it also suggests that there is nothing really new to look forward to here on the Net. Sure we might find new and innovative ways of marketing our wares to surfers but the basic things that attract surfers to the Net in the first place have all been discovered.

Now all that is happening is that those basics are being repackaged and labeled with new labels. So what innovative thing came after site creators and how could you repackage it so it looks new and fresh today?