The Business of Life

Net Resolutions

On the first day of the New Year and at the dawn of a new decade no less, I'll propose a few resolutions that I'd like to see both content-providers and consumers alike take to heart about the Internet in 2010. Over the past two years, I have spent a lot of time reading and reflecting on the impact of this www culture, and using that to launch a web-based business venture. An unintended result was the following thoughts about how we might all improve what goes into that electronic filing cabinet and what we choose to do with it.

Here are three things that the connectors/aggregators, content-providers, and advertisers could resolve to do in 2010:

Google/Bing 2.010 - We have billions of web pages covering millions of topics. Probably only several thousand will have any lasting impact or relevance to society. Google should write one of their elegant algorithms to eliminate and permanently bury the junk that proliferates unchecked. Sturgeon's Law says that "90% of everything is crap." If that's really true, or even if you like Pareto's 80-20 rule better, I'm sure that Microsoft could find a way to have some kind of filter on what makes it into search results. If Pareto and Sturgeon are right, it may be no more sophisticated than choosing to ignore 80-90% of what is written, and with those odds you'd probably have as much chance of success as if you went hunting for dairy cows with a machine gun. Let's just agree that if your stuff isn't on the first two or three pages of search results, nobody is looking for you and what you posted is probably not any good.
AOL/Yahoo/MSN 2.010 - The content providers and aggregators should resolve to eliminate content that is clearly a waste of time and responsible for foreigners saying that we are now not only the "ugly Americans" but dumb ones too. We could start by agreeing that every celebretard, fad diet, pet tearjecker, or fringe militia group gets only three articles per year. No exceptions. Just because the web is limitless does not mean it shouldn't have boundaries. Not only is the sheer volume of information daunting, but its overall quality is often suspect. As Clay Shirky posits in his book, Here Comes Everybody, the ability to post content on the Internet has afforded everyone a largely equal voice. Instead of "filter then publish", we have become a "publish then filter" community. Do we really need PopEater, TMZ, FanHouse and a bunch of other purveyors of yesterday's flotsam? Who are these professional bloggers with good pictures and no journalistic gravitas? I can only assume that if some of these editors had been at newspapers and magazines, we would have de-forested North America and Europe long ago.
Advertisers and Analytics 2.010 - Let's face it, some real nut-job websites attract big audiences and lots of "eyeballs" that advertisers covet. I would suggest that some of the idiots wouldn't have an "ad-supported" village to preach to if the advertisers applied better metrics to their spending patterns. Advertisers should resolve to go back to the basics... demographics, psychographics, purchasing histories, societal comparatives... and recognize that it is not how many but whose eyeballs are looking that really matters.

Here are three actions that we consumers should resolve to take in 2010:

Publishing 2.010 - This is no time to be the dumb kid who didn't study but feels compelled to be the first hand up in calculus class. Instead of a few dozen direct witnesses to your stupidity and a few more days of lunchroom ridicule, you could live in the cyber-comedy archives before millions of strangers. If you're going to post something, make sure you have some reasonable purpose and more than a passing hint of expertise. Our society wants desperately to embrace the concept of equality where everyone gets an award, even if we just "show up." Nobody ever gets cut, asked to sit down, or sent home early. Sorry, but that's not reality. Just as you shouldn't mix chemicals without an understanding of chemistry and reactive properties, you probably shouldn't post opinions without an understanding of the factual underpinnings of the subject matter.
Publishing 2.010.1 - A special but important corollary to the above deals with the world of self-published or pay-to-print practitioners. We now have more niche publications, book publishers, online specialty sites, industry blogs, affinity groups, communities, and outlets for our creativity than ever before in history. The bottom line is this. If you can't find someone to read or listen to what you are saying, it likely isn't very good. Paying someone several thousand dollars to publish what you wrote is a true fool's errand. Like the old saying goes, "just because you're standing in a garage doesn't make you a mechanic." Having a book published (especially one you paid for) is no singular indicator of expertise or relevance. I would argue that anyone driven to self-publishing is likely only an expert in an outsized ego with a healthy dose of delusion.
Writing 2.010 - If yur going to writ anething on the internet at lest spell chek it fisrt before postng. Nothing can devalue an opinion quicker than a bunch of misspellings and grammatical errors. The only things that might be worse are the woeful descents into racial and ethnic epithets, often accompanied by profanity and references to various bodily functions. More than anything, these contribute nothing to the collective intelligence or public debate. Frequently, the only revelation is the stupidity shown by the writer. The best way to look at posting any content might be to remember what any good carpenter would say, "Measure twice, cut once."

That's it from here. It's New Years Day and there's football to be watched. If we consumers take up the challenge of being more responsible, we could have a better 'net next year. If the providers take some initiative to drive quality over quantity, we could really have something expansive and worthwhile. Of course, George W. Bush could write his autobiography without any help from Dick Cheney and the Catholic Church could quit being a safe harbor for pedophile priests. Right.

Labels: AOL, Bing, Clay Shirky, Google, internet content, internet postings, MSN, New Years resolutions, self-publishing, Yahoo

posted by Tom Hagerty @ 8:38 AM