A real self-destructing web page...

Category: Internet

Published: 12/14/2008 01:09 p.m.

I found this article on digg and expecting something quite different. It talks about ads on webpages that incorporate the page into the ad. For example, and iTouch ad that bends the background as the device is rotated. While that is all and well, it gave me a much better idea for a self-destructing page.

Imagine combining the ideas of woot and blogs. Everyday you write a post and then the next day your new post "over-writes" the old one. Essentially this is a one-post blog with no archive. What you would hopefully play off of is the way people fall prey to things with a limited life. A limited-time only sale may be a better motivator than having constant low prices. In this same sense, a self-destructing webpage would be the same. People would have to read it on your terms, not theirs.

I realize this flies in the face of a lot of technology. Storage for blog posts is free in many cases, so there is no scarcity there. And the idea of not having a rss feed may turn off other potential readers. But I think curiosity is a hard thing to overcome, especially on the internet where the cost of visiting a webpage is minimal. You could even take it a step further and allow for a comments feed that would remain, but not the post itself. This would be interesting too I think.

For this idea to really function, you would need to prevent your posts from being published elsewhere. This may be the most difficult part. The first step would be to publish as an image and not straight text. But even then anyone could re-transcribe your thoughts and ideas. You would also have to track down people who did copy your work and get them to take it down. So, perhaps this isn't the best of digital ideas, but I surely think it is innovative.

Postsecret is the only website that I know of that is successful and uses this type of model. They make money selling books with contain content that will not disappear. And it could be the content of Postsecret that makes it so successful, but I think the notion of not keeping an archive helps a bit too.