Around the Net
Pastebin Gets Its Close-up
- The New York Times, Monday, October 10, 2011 12 AM
Along with a kaleidoscope of causes, the Occupy Wall Street movement is shedding light on Pastebin.com -- a site created for programmers about a decade ago as a way to save and share code. “The service could not be simpler,” The New York Times writes. “There is a “bin” (an empty input box) into which text is pasted. No registration is required.”
Per the NYT, Pastebin has become the de facto open-source bible of the protests, which it attributes to the site’s simplicity, as well as its humble origins as a programmers’ site. “In a fashion, it is offering direct, anonymous ‘publishing’ that does not even require the efforts or inspection of a group like WikiLeaks,. If a blog is akin to an online diary, and Twitter offers repeated telegraph-style status updates, Pastebin is something like the empty space on a phone-booth wall or at a community center, where you can anonymously tack up an announcement, or write someone else’s phone number along with a crude description, or offer your first try at a manifesto.”
Could Pastebin’s success have implications for brands, most of whom are still trying to wrap their heads around Facebook and Twitter? The right brand, we assume.
