Are You Contributing to Internet Trash?

Are You Contributing to Internet Trash?

I recently read an article that summarized that 90% of Facebook business pages could, or as the author said,should, be deleted because they were of poor design, low traffic, no updates and basically (or literally) abandoned by their creators.  From my experience looking at Facebook business pages, he may have a point.

But, it's more than just Facebook business pages.  If you look around the Internet, you'll find hundreds of dead, inactive or unused accounts.  We hear about the "next great thing" like Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Facebook, ActiveRain, etc and we jump on it.  We play around with it for a few days or months, then move on to the next great thing.

It's extremely easy to create a website or blog these days.  You've got places like Activerain, Blogger and Wordpress.com where you can have a blog in as little as 15 minutes or less.  And there are literally hundreds of "Build a Website" places where you can start up a basic website on the fly.   This has also created a lot of Internet Trash.  These easy to create sites are usually free and so, unless the user chooses to delete them, they stay out on the Internet forever.  What generally happens with these sites is that the creator gets bored with them, doesn't think it's working, or decides to improve and goes to a self-hosted or some other platform.

A recent Google search really threw this out for me.  I was looking for a computer repair shop in the area and clicked on the top search.  It pulled up a website, but all the links were bad (even Contact Us).  I went back to the search and clicked further down.  It was the same company, different website.  Here's where their cheap starter website was ranking better than their new and improved site.  And this was a computer company.  You would think that they would understand this.

How bad is Internet Trash?  Look no further than right here at AR.  Activerain boasts over 200,000 members, but anyone that has been around here for a bit knows that the "active" number is less than 10% of that (and I'd wager closer to 5% or less).  A quick look at my small area of the map and I can spot a half dozen or more agents that aren't even in the business anymore, let alone keeping their blog supported.

Just imagine how much better the Internet would be if we could clean it up a bit?  I know I've been guilty of Internet Litter.  What about you?

Have you contributed to Internet Trash?

photo courtesy of MyNameMattersNot