What's going on with my Internet? | Some geeky observations ... that lead me to think that the more things change the more they stay the same ... sorta but not really but kinda... | It's like a hologram. What do I mean? Well, think of the very first time you look at a hologram. Seeing the first image, one is inclined to think, "Oh, there's the image." Then the tilt happens and you think, "Oh, well but there's another view." And then the hologram is tilted again and you're looking at the first image ... but ... now ... now you know ... there's more to this thing than originally meets the eye ... and you can never look at one image without immediately thinking of the other.
Well, the Internet Now (aka Web 2.0) is like that. The more talk and development there is in the Web 2.0, the more I see the Web 1.0.
And when I left the above paragraph, I intended to follow it with a few more short paragraphs to basically say ... "So. Here's the present and that was the past but there's nothing really new under the sun and lessons still go unlearned." Just really short ... but ... it got away from me ... so to save you some time, here's the conclusion of my rant. (If you read the whole thing, I hope you find it amusing.):
My bottom-line opinion
There are a few places in this Internet of Now, this "Web 2.0", that are actually enjoyable ... because the advertising is very low key ... and the people sharing and talking are very real ... and the information being traded is either useful or entertaining ... OR ... they have found ways to bring the incredible vastness of the Internet under control ... OR ... they have found ways to unite people based on very specific criteria ... that the people themselves choose. If you're a geek, chances are you're already using these sites. If you aren't a geek, I will show you examples of these sites in another article (in April).
The more things change, the more they stay the same ... it's just going to the next level ... And, to me, what I see ... the thing that keeps morphing without ever changing is this:
Everyone just wants to find an audience that will sit still long enough to let them tell their story and then they want the audience to respond to the story! Think about it ... can you think of a way that I'm wrong there? From scientific research to the dating game to the marketing pleas, all they want is a chance to be heard and get a response that says, "I hear you. I relate. I respond."
I am equally convinced that the moment advertising &/or design overpowers the ability of people to easily connect -- that is the moment people give up and leave ... and from what I've seen, they leave in groups.
April 4 Note: I was out roaming the Highway again last night. I bumped into Ethan Zuckerman at his blog, My Heart's in Accra. In his April 3 post, Web 2.0 and the web serf, Ethan was gracious enough to supply me with some words to express for me this concept I have that it's all about community and storytelling:... businesses that depend on user-created content are desperate to keep users from switching services, or setting up their own websites. A stupid way to keep loyalty is to make it difficult for users to switch - this creates angry users....
A much smarter way to accomplish it is to build communities. Boris [Read Ethan's post] has a switching cost in leaving Flickr not because they're holding his photos ransomed - he's got them cached in half a dozen other places - but because he spends half his waking hours commenting on other photos and checking out what his friends have posted. He can change photo-sharing sites, but the community won't neccesarily come with him. The community, not the data, provides the lock-in.
Thank you Ethan! I've decided Ethan will also be in my April zine.
If you want to skip over my reasoning process (and my story) to my list of interesting sites and interesting people, Click Here
A Little History from my Point of View
There was the original Internet that was so incredible ... all about text and file downloads. I had a very very brief encounter with that Internet ... but even then the Internet was social and even then it was possible to download very small images (that we thought were huge because back then the monitors were ... different ... (if you're wondering how different, find a geek to explain dpi and modem speeds of 1200 baud to you.)
Then, later, I had a brief ... maybe one week, free experience with Compuserve. It was very straightforward and information driven ... and there were people talking to each other.
In both of my encounters, I only lurked and observed and downloaded. Then, about 6 months later I was challenged by a friend to actually get on the Internet and USE it. Well by then, I actually knew at least two people-with-skin-on who were really using the Internet so I figured at least I'd have someone to interact with on the web.
I chose AOL because I could use a bank draft. I had to fax in a "canceled" check and sign something. I didn't have a stand alone fax. I used a handheld, black & white scanner that could scan about a 3" wide strip and then do a fair job of stitching the strips together to create "picture" files. Then, I faxed them in using my computer. No, I didn't know I was "high-tech" at the time. I was just acquiring the tools I needed and making them work for me.
But! It's always been social!
So, right, as I was saying ... Internet ... always social ... always looking for ways to see other people's photos ... always full of opinion ... oh and information ... and once I got started, I couldn't quite stop!
I'm convinced ... and if anybody has proof, I want to know about it ... that as soon as two or more were gathered together on the Internet ... personal, social interaction took place. I doubt the Internet was purely an "Information Highway."
Once, after I'd been on AOL for just a few months, I got an email from another lady named Pam ... turns out she and I were the only Pam's in mid-sized suburban city of about 200,000. We got together for coffee. I still talk to people she introduced me to ... online ... not in person.
Another time there was a crisis in my community and I pulled up all the people in my same suburban city and sent them a note ... all 37 of them.
I even got legitimate job offers from real people!
I met many people online and then offline in the "real world." I was seldom disappointed. The person I met online was usually the same person I met in real life. I never used the forums. I talked to people based on user searches at AOL -- first just through email and then, a year later came IM's.
There was a certain gentleman I met who described AOL this way: "It is the Disco of the ninety's." And he was right.
After AOL, came broadband cable -- just 2 yrs later and that's when I found out about forums and I landed in iVillage. I met a lady there who lives in Florida. She ended up with my favorite dog. We still talk ...
Connection Lost due to Overloaded Circuits
But then EVERYbody got on the Internet and I left AOL and left iVillage because they went stupidly commercial and I stopped hanging out in forums because they were full of spam and riff-raff ... unless you paid ... And I did pay. A whole whopping $15/yr for one site specifically for a specific technical thing I was involved in. Priceless. But ... the Internet lost some of it's original charm. It was too difficult for me to connect to people in small groups.
The Hologram Again
So now I keep encountering blah blah blah about this new "social" Internet. And about how the "new Internet" is about bringing bigger, better, more affordable (preferably free) programs online.
But for all of this chatter, the more I play with the new stuff ... and look at this "new image" that's being presented to me, the more I remember the first image. The new Internet stuff still reminds me of "oh this is like when I did this or that (social) on AOL" or "oh this is like a web program I used back three or four years ago." Although, I will admit that there are some very nice new programs out there and that I've been playing with several ... and I can see myself even getting addicted to some.
It seems that the powers that be are finally understanding that people all over the world are just like me. They want to use the Internet to connect and communicate with people. They want to be able to find small groups and large groups to belong to. They want to be able to speak and be heard and possibly make a difference with their words.
The "Free-Ride" Advertising Myth
But, I also still see the the Internet then and now have a similar flaw. They both have the idea in common that very great services can be provided strictly on advertising income. I personally believe this is impossible without the site becoming a "modern magazine."
Can you open a magazine and easily glean out a packet of useful information without wading through rivers of advertising? The advertising floods out onto the floor or it carries a seven paragraph article on and on for pages and pages. To me, web sites that depend on advertising are hard-pressed to avoid behaving in the same manner or looking like the back pages of magazines where all those ads are laid out end to end in one nasty mess.
I have nothing against advertising ... I'm examining my own affiliation options aka advertising publication options. But let me know if my pages ever look like JUST advertising pages. And I promise, I will never flash advertising at you. I promise.
But you see, the thing that "publishers" -- whether it's on the web, or newspaper, or magazine, or television -- do not understand is that they are bogging down the "consumer" experience. On the Internet, it is a very literal bogging down. There is a belief that broadband cures all these complications but that is not true. First, there are a great many people who are still limited to dial-up Internet (some of my favorite guests, for example). Second, a fast page load is good, a faster page load is better, and it will always be so. (Hint: if it flashes, it's slows the user's computer itself not just the transmission rate.) Third, people are just tired of being flashed .... If it flashes or rotates ... really it's more bad news than I want to cover here.
Good Design? New? Can you say da Vinci? Heck! What about cavemen? Geeze ...
There's all this simplicity chatter and design pattern chatter but these are principles that have existed what? forever? ... bad design has always been bad design ... I mean look at the works documented by da Vinci! I bet even the cavemen developed very efficiently, beautifully designed items to trade with their fellow hunters, gatherers, and even their communication experts--you know the cave wall communications. Can you explain to me why anyone ever thought the Internet would be exempt from these facts?
Anyway, as I said, I didn't realize I had a tirade to drop in this section ...
The List that Inspired this Tirade
So moving on ... for the geeks and wanna be geeks ... this is a very very very short list of people I've just bumped into over the last three or four months who are trying to think this Internet thing through ... from design to motivating people to respond.
This is a list of bloggers and other thinkers that are musing about what is going on with the Internet and what is possible and what is not/ should not be possible.
The "Usability" of it all, patterns, and design.
These are the guys I relate to most strongly and to whom I hope that someone will listen. (I'm trying to listen but hey ... you can't proof your own writing and you can't test your own program or design. I'm breaking the rules and doing it all here on this site.)
Somewhere along the way I signed up for Jakob Nielsen's Newsletter. Jakob Nielsen's Website is UseIt.com
I noticed he is in with The Nielsen Norman Group and that Don Norman has a site of his own as well. Shortly, I will be reading his book: Emotional Design. That I am sure of.
This article at Digital Web Magazine on The Principles of Design is my absolute favorite because it is easy to envision how to apply these principles to everything I do ... from my web site to my photography.
Marketing on the Internet
Then let me think ... Andreas Ramos is a category unto his own. I will talk more about Andreas later. Right now he is focusing on SEO and AdWords.
The thing I most enjoy about Andreas' site is that he talks to me like I'm in about 5th or 6th grade. Now, that's nice for my brain ... but do you know that if your blurb is going to go through an online translation program such as AltaVista's Babel Fish or Google, you'd best be typing in very simple, structurally correct English. Short Sentences. Subject/Verb clause stuff. That's what I learned from the Tom Cat and the Fireman.
Ya know how ya can personalize your Google home page now? ... well Simply Recipes is one of the personalizations. It is a blog by Elise Bauer and eventually, from there, I landed here and Elise's business blog: Pacifica Group's Blog/Site's collection of info on Internet marketing. It is excellent. Elise also has a blog on learning Moveable Type.
Then there's Steve Rubel's Micro Persuasion--"explores how social software is transforming marketing, media and public relations" ... a very interesting collection of snippets ... basically of anything on the web that could be useful to marketers or marketing. He's also a real blogging pro!
And that is how I was led to Scott Ginsberg "Author/Speaker/That guy with the nametag." You'll just have to check Scott out for yourself ... I find him to be just the sort of person who can lead the campaign he's leading ;-D.
Reading Steve and Scott led me to WOMMA Blog and the WOMBAT Blog. Word of Mouth Marketing Association always has interesting tid-bits.
The Mother Load of "New"
But then there's the Mother Load Source on alllll the buzz around all this "New Internet," "Web 2.0" as described by Tim O'Reilly. Yes, of O'Reilly books fame. What Is Web 2.0: Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software. Some day I'll sit still and read it ... but skimming over it was eye opening!
Someone to Track it all for me
On Technorati.com, I bumped into Michael Arrington's blog. He writes TechCrunch and "... profiles and reviews new web 2.0 products and companies." I, of course, found more new "toys" to play with.
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| What's going on with my Internet? | Some geeky observations ... that lead me to think that the more things change the more they stay the same ... sorta but not really but kinda... | |
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Telling My Stories and Discovering Your Stories
