[hinkley]

Way back in the long dark ago I ran into some abandonware for incorporating third party data onto web pages via a shared server. Nobody I knew understood how it was meant to work, but I got the impression it was meant to be a tool where a group of people could host commentary about a website that was not their own.

I keep wondering why nobody has really tried that again. Slashdot sort of filled in that space, and then Digg and now Reddit. Or Facebook for the 'all-in' solution. I keep thinking there was something I was missing about why that would be difficult to pull off.

Today I have a different answer for that - that ship has sailed. We are multi-device and it would be much more difficult for me to have a consistent experience across phone and personal (and sometimes work) machines.

But at the time perhaps it as an adoption thing. Just visiting a website is a cheap interaction that can lead to a habit. Having to do something special doesn't work the same way.