Cater to the web2.0 user-reader (or perish)
The aptly titled “you don’t understand our audience”
Today while I was surfing through the most popular delicious links, I found this article (above). It’s about — well, I don’t actually know what it’s about because the content was locked behind a registration field.
CONTINUE READING below
Apparently, MIT Technology Review hasn’t learned the big web2.0 lesson of the New York Times: Namely, that web readers made it abundantly clear that we won’t read content behind paywalls and registration fields. Here’s the logic: As a first time visitor, I have no sense of the quality or relevance of the publication’s content.
Time is everything
For the web reader, the key issue is time. We don’t have a lot of it. I will move on in seconds if I don’t find what I want (i.e., the content). In fact, I’ve got at least a dozen other items from my RSS and delicious to take a look at.
Within a few minutes of deciding not to read Technology Review, I received a link from a writer friend to a New York Times article about Japanese cell phone novels. He thought I might like to add this to my delicious and I have. I did so because I was able to scan the article (and deduce it has value). Bravo New York Times! You’ve learned from your mistakes and really earned that fancy new skyscraper.
The NYT is also making my user experience extra nice by providing me with all the tools I need to aggregate their content for my own viewing/reading pleasure. This is, of course, par for the course for any online publication – but I’m still grateful. And I’ll likely give them my loyalty as a reader, aggregator (building their traffic with my blog post links and delicious bookmark), demographic data and potential source of ad revenue.
My TOP 3 demands as a web2.0 user-reader
1. Let me read your content
Ask me to register or subscribe and I’ll move on. In fact, I might be so turned off that I avoid your publication altogether. My registration to your site is a gift of my user data. I know this and so do you. Respect me and I’ll respect you.
2. Let me bookmark
Give me social bookmarking tools – I expect them. Make sure I can find them quickly on the page. And don’t let your minimalist designer bury the recognisable icon (they’re doing so at the expense of inbound links). Remember, my whole day isn’t going to revolve around your website content so give me tools to bookmark the content for later. Otherwise, I will move on. I don’t have time to read your articles all the way to the bottom. Nor do I have time to discover the bookmarking tool concealed by the same font as your content – my favourite example of this is the New Yorker (you’ll find the bookmarks all the way at the bottom of the page in a lovely san serif font).
3. Let me participate
Let me participate with your content (other publications do). If you write something really interesting, I (or other readers) might add further value or insights that will attract other readers to take part in the discussion. In some cases, the option to discuss a story will create more traffic for your site than the article alone. Take Edward McClelland’s provocative Salon feature How Oprah Ruined the Marathon. His piece was all the talk of the running world for several days and nearly blew the caps off of the Salon server in reader responses. All that attention means traffic. Traffic is a metric of web success.
I just invented Web 3.0 — the audience as editor. I think this version of “How Oprah Ruined the Marathon” is much more constructive and persuasive: http://tedmcclelland.com/articles/oprahmarathon.html
Hi Ted,
Thanks for your comment and thanks very much for the link to your follow up – that, in and of itself, is totally web2.0 (e.g., that the original author can, with the help of the web, respond and revisit the text – and is encouraged to so do).
And I LOVE your idea of web3.0 – that’s all part of it.
These days, the idea of individual talent and the development of the auteur are getting more and more unpopular in relation to “mash up” culture and the idea of the collaborative read-write web. I honestly think both have equal value. We need strong original voices and distinct perspectives – but we also need participation.
I think your experience with the Salon piece (and all of the attention you received) is really exemplary of an extremely important change that’s occurred in traditional media. In fact, I’ve told your story to most of my students to illustrate just how different this new publishing moment is. And how editors, publishers and writers no longer control the message.
What’s unique about your story is how you responded – with grace and professionalism. That’s another area of skill that emerging journalists will have to work on (how they deal with the immediacy of responses to their work). Had I not read your response – I would have come to your article with a different perspective. And after reading your responses to your piece (at CBC) I was able to grasp some of the nuances of your argument that hadn’t struck me from the first piece. I suspect these nuances have infused your current version.
This is what web2.0 is all about – participation and collaboration. I think it’s going to be good for writers to have all this feedback. And it’s more exciting to have a conversation.
I’m open to being wrong. I’m open to dialogue. That’s the only way to approach this new moment. If we’re really really smart, we’ll embrace the feedback loop and see what we can learn.
I’ve read more than one blogger who changed their view after some dialogue with people who brought another perspective into play. That’s really important to intellectual life, our own integrity as thinkers/communicators/teachers and to the preservation of democracy.
So, had you only read the revised piece, what would your response have been? Or would you even have had a response? Would we even be here, or would “How Oprah Ruined the Marathon” have swirled out of memory, like most of what is written?
Ted,
Let me have some time on this. I’d like to respond thoughtfully. And I will! I hope others will find your comment above and visit your site to see the revised version … (but of course, you’ll one day have a blog and that willl make your stuff even easier to find ;-)
Re; memory
The internet never forgets! People find stuff way, way, way after the expiration date. In my old blog, I used to get comments on items that were really stale (simply because somebody had searched for something and found me randomly).
The first wave of readers are the most web savvy. They’re an important demographic. The next wave of readers are valuable but generally don’t spend as much time online.
This is why a lot of mags will close threads after a certain period (to keep it manageable).