The Feng Shui of the I Ching of Web 2.0 – A summation
To succeed in Web, one has to studiously throw out accepted perceptions and consider first principles.
The new ‘audience’ for technical information like the new ‘audience’ for political news [and others] is not a classic audience. It demands surpassing involvement/experience of its ‘editors’. It prefers participants to observers. Articles per se [as noted before ] hold no especial value with readers [newsmakers are a bit more charitable] because the anti-commercial façade of the web dovetails so nicely with the web generations attitude to IP.
The Web rolled over some conventional press. The feeling at the start was that it would complement or supplement. But in many cases it supplants. In the case of the trade press at play was a certain loss of underpinning of notion of the universe of readers useful to advertisers. Behind that was a general lack of trust in psychology, the force behind 20th Century advertising. ['It may work on other people, but not me.']
In pursuing first principles the essential question remains: What are the fundamental questions. What content do people want? In what context do they want it delivered? How can the endeavor support itself or profit so as to support further endeavors? Party’s over!
Just a side note – this relates to newspapers today. Studies tell the editors to use more up front summaries [See NYT any day, p2-5] Its for ‘people in a hurry’ ‘its weblike’ . yes but so what. I think it’s a mistake. What is more useful trat of a newspaper thant its insane readability versus other media. Throw out the toc all together and let them read away – but make that work! First thing they told us in Journalism school was to go on the subway and watch over their shoulders as people read a paper. To see how people read it. Don’t make it more like the web!
Unrelated but something I picked up during the course of this quest Quotes of David Ogilvy
The new ‘audience’ for technical information like the new ‘audience’ for political news [and others] is not a classic audience. It demands surpassing involvement/experience of its ‘editors’. It prefers participants to observers. Articles per se [as noted before ] hold no especial value with readers [newsmakers are a bit more charitable] because the anti-commercial façade of the web dovetails so nicely with the web generations attitude to IP.
The Web rolled over some conventional press. The feeling at the start was that it would complement or supplement. But in many cases it supplants. In the case of the trade press at play was a certain loss of underpinning of notion of the universe of readers useful to advertisers. Behind that was a general lack of trust in psychology, the force behind 20th Century advertising. ['It may work on other people, but not me.']
In pursuing first principles the essential question remains: What are the fundamental questions. What content do people want? In what context do they want it delivered? How can the endeavor support itself or profit so as to support further endeavors? Party’s over!
Just a side note – this relates to newspapers today. Studies tell the editors to use more up front summaries [See NYT any day, p2-5] Its for ‘people in a hurry’ ‘its weblike’ . yes but so what. I think it’s a mistake. What is more useful trat of a newspaper thant its insane readability versus other media. Throw out the toc all together and let them read away – but make that work! First thing they told us in Journalism school was to go on the subway and watch over their shoulders as people read a paper. To see how people read it. Don’t make it more like the web!
Unrelated but something I picked up during the course of this quest Quotes of David Ogilvy
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