October 18, 2007
Web 2.0 is not only over hyped, but innovators add features to web applications to improve the user experience. Are these extra bells and whistles really improving our lives and making things easier?
To me, the answer to this question is a resounding no.
I don’t fault people for wanting to be diverse. I don’t fault innovators for wanting to innovate. However, I think that a narrower focus is better for survival in the long run.
Interestingly enough, I had this conversation with a close friend who inspired me to blog about a year ago. Blogging on broad topics, he said, was not ideal. Focus on one area; don’t go in different directions. Capture your audience first.
Initially, I didn’t think his advice was that sound. I think blogs can go all directions. After all, Darren Rowse said that your first 10,000 blog posts are always the worst. He’s right about that. But your first 10 blog posts are probably worse than your latter 90, and you improve as you go along. Brian Clark summed it up nicely by urging bloggers to write. You gain experience with every post, every comment, and every ounce of feedback.
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March 13, 2007
I saw a very strange thing today. In response to Chris’s post about MySpace’s Digg clone, SearchAnyway replied using video. But if you listen to the whole one minute and forty seconds of the video, there’s nothing in it except for a guy talking, trying to explain to News Corp that removing the “Digg” button would be a bad move and would ostracize a user community.
After watching the video in its entirety, I couldn’t help but wonder if video was necessary for the points that the other Chris wanted to get across. It would make for a great written blog, but video? After all, it was just a monologue of a guy making an argument, which would have done much better in the written word with the necessary emphasis.
While online video is a “technological breakthrough,” I don’t think there’s much effectiveness when video is being used this way to tell a story without any engaging aspects. As I wrote in December, we are already heavily overloaded with multimedia, and not everybody is ready to embrace it. Further, it’s hard for individuals to take the time out of the day to immerse themselves in content that is not easily multitaskable (my new word for the day; I told you I could have used Quizlet). Blog video defies the nature of blogging (and RSS). Once I start watching this speech, I have to watch it in its entirety. Some folks might be inclined to go so far as to say “I want that 1 minute 40 seconds of my life back.”
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Digital Marketing Specialist, Social Media Consultant,
and Tech Geek at Heart