Drinking the Web Through A Straw
And the AMP Milkshake…
The other day I came across a link to an old article of mine which was shared on Twitter. But when I clicked on the link, something was different. Something was better. Far better.
You see, the link in question was to an AMP version of the article on TechCrunch. The Accelerated Mobile Pages project version — the new, lightweight web format being touted by Google and others as an answer to Facebook’s “Instant Articles.”
I had come across the format on mobile a few times before, where it’s designed to be seen. But the format is actually more striking on the desktop, where I happened to see it this time. Because on the desktop we’re all used to seeing the absolute worst of the web. That is, ridiculous widgets, awful JavaScript load times, and, of course, ads galore. AMP stripped all of the crud away and just gave me unadulterated content. And gave it to me fast.
It was such a revelation. I wanted to view all web-based content this way. Not just on mobile, everywhere. And sure enough, there are some hacks to do that if the content you’re viewing is AMP-enabled. And it’s glorious. At least a million times better than the content pages most sites are happy to shove in your face.
While ad-blockers have gotten all of the lip service with regard to the disruption of content, AMP seems potentially more of a change agent. If anyone saw a regular page of web content side-by-side with an AMP’d page, there’s no question they’d choose to see the latter, every single time.
And that doesn’t even speak to the arguably more important issue: page load time. Compared to an AMP page, trying to load a regular page of content on the web feels like trying to suck it in through a straw. A very tiny straw.
And so you have to wonder what this means for everyone’s favorite topic: the future of publishing. While AMP supports ads, it doesn’t allow for the visual barrage we’re all now used to seeing on the web. While, just as with Instant Articles, this will probably be tweaked after some publisher push-back, it’s hard to see an AMP world where a dozen ads are on a page of content — otherwise, what’s the point of AMP?
So maybe publishers can start charging a higher premium for the limited AMP-compatible ads that are shown. But will it be enough to make them whole? That’s obviously the key question. I doubt it.
So maybe that’s what stops AMP (and maybe even Instant Articles, though the value proposition is a bit different there). But with the seed now planted on the web, if the format continues to spread, it’s hard to imagine a world in which users don’t demand it everywhere. Which will create for an interesting situation.
But I no longer have to care about any of that. The only thing I care about is content being served as quickly and as beautifully as possible (something which Medium does quite well — and it too will soon offer up AMP and Instant Article support). All I know when I load up a page like this, as opposed to this version, it’s like the proverbial glass of ice water in hell.
To mix a metaphor with a movie reference, I drink it up.
Disclaimer: I’m a partner at a company which is a sister company to one of the main drivers of the (open sourced) AMP format. Of course, said sister company is also the main driver of advertising on the web, so… conflicting conflicts?
