The Next Web is relaunching as The Nostalgic Web, because the future is overrated

We’re a forward-looking bunch at The Next Web – our name screams ‘the future’, after all. But in the light of revelations of widespread online government surveillance and our increasing realization that technology will eventually grow too smart and kill us all, we’ve become wary of what’s ahead.

All these bad vibes got us thinking about the past. The Internet was much more fun before spies worked out how to track us all, before your phone could talk back to you and before selfies became a ‘thing’. What’s more, all of our rival publications spend their time looking at the present or future, too. Shouldn’t we be different and look to the past?

As of tomorrow, The Next Web is rebranding as The Nostalgic Web. Same logo, new focus.

We have years of content in our archives that no-one looks at any more, so just as ‘gold’ radio stations play music from the past, we’ll only be republishing classic tech news.

Who can forget such hits as:

• Our enthusiastic coverage of the launch of Klout
• When Scoble was a pioneer in the field of favoriting on Twitter
• When Google Calendar’s favicon changed
• When some clothes got made out of sour milk

Seriously, why do people not read these any more? From tomorrow, they’ll be front-and-center; our site will be filled with classic content, 24 hours a day. To celebrate the new direction, we’ll be inviting you to share your best Geocities homepage designs, with the chance to win an original 1997 America Online promotional floppy disk, fully compatible with your Gateway-branded Windows 95 PC.

While our upcoming European conference will still take place as normal (very much looking to the future because we’ve already booked the speakers), after that all our events will be firmly rooted in the past. We’re already planning a JavaScript 1.0 hackathon to take place this summer and our next big event will be devoted to making the most of Internet Explorer 6.

The Nostalgic Web is coming. Admit it, you can’t wait.

Image credit: Raymond Gilford / Flickr