For the Content Hungry: The Eat Media Blog

OK, so you are putting up a new website or giving yours a major overhaul. In the planning stages of the project, someone on the team raises the question: which browsers do we optimize for?

Internet Exploder is a no-brainer, as it still commands more than 65 percent of the browser business. IE 8 just came out, so it’s in, as is IE 7 and probably even IE 6. The poor schmo still using IE 5 is just going to have to be out of luck.

Mozilla’s Firefox is definitely in, with nearly 22 percent of web traffic crossing it’s highly-configurable architecture.

Which bring us to Apple’s Safari, at about 8 percent of the market. It’s easy to write Safari off as something that’s Mac-only and therefore not significant enough to matter.

But consider this: Apple’s iPhone, running Safari, had 50 percent of the mobile web traffic in February 2009, more than twice that of second place RIM, maker of the Blackberry. iPhones accounted for 0.5 percent of all traffic on the internet in February.

Suddenly, it’s harder to ignore Safari. And it’s getting a lot harder to ignore mobile web surfers as well. Using Safari on the iPhone is a delight, a far, far cry from the crappy WAP browsers of old. While visiting friends in Amsterdam in 2003, I had my first experience with a web-enabled phone and visited a few WAP sites. Not only were they slow, they were limited to text only. Today, I get full access to the web through my iPhone. (OK, not having Flash is still a drag….)

So if you are updating you site or launching a new one soon, be thinking mobile. By extension, that means you are going on a Safari.

— Jonathan

It’s not Billy Mays’ fault that his voice could drive a train down a dirt road.

How many times have you peacefully dozed off in front of the TV, a dog snoozing under each arm, only to be slapped into consciousness by:

I have removed startled dachshunds from my neck one too many times.

Apparently, loud commercials are also the bete noir of California Congresswoman Anna G. Eshoo, who introduced the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act last June. The bill would prohibit commercials from being broadcast louder than the programs they reside in.

The advertising industry is: a) up in arms about any more federal regulation of what they do and how they do it; b) denying that commercials are being broadcast louder than TV programs; and c) admitting that making the commercials louder may be annoying, but it is effective in getting people’s attention.

They’ve been drinking too much of their own Kool-Aid again. Do they really think that making consumers angry is the way to go? I know that annoying commercials have never gotten me to buy anything and have made me vow to never buy certain products, including everything pitched by the stentorian Mr. Mays.

Online, the ad assault on the senses continues, with purveyors of rich media advertisements continually coming up with new ways to annoy. Pock-up blocker enabled? Too bad. We’ve got your flashy, shaking ads, your auto-play video ads, your expandable ads (those awful things that fold across the page or explode in size when you mouse over them) and your floating ads (the ones that bob and weave across the page, daring you to click on the little “x” that will make them go away, then moving at the last second so you click on the ad anyway).

And with people up-armoring their browsers to block all advertising, what’s a marketer left to do? What is left behind once the ads are gone?

Content.

Learn to love it. It’s the final frontier.

We are devouring so much media these days: websites, emails, newsletters, TV, radio, print (albeit dwindling), online videos and social media. With this avalanche of content you’d think that we would be less detailed about picking up on the nuances, less effected by poor communication and design, but I find the opposite to be true. The more media I consume the more neon orange and off-putting the really bad content becomes and the more pastoral and engaging the well written/designed content becomes.

Here are a few examples of messages I recently received that turned me off:

WHERE’S THE BFF

“Hi Ian,

I’m thrilled to personally invite you to Mediabistro Circus 2009, Extraordinary Impact: Where Media Meets Technology. An impressive roster of new media MacGyvers will share ingenious ways to make the most of limited resources in a challenging economy.

At Mediabistro Circus, you’ll learn how to:

Turn your passion into a business with Tim Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Workweek
Give your brand personality with Gary Vaynerchuck, host of Wine Library TV
Build relationships that power success with Keith Ferrazzi, author of Never Eat Alone
Create a journalism of engagement with John A. Byrne, executive editor, Businessweek.com
Create your own social network with Gina Bianchini, founder and CEO of social networking platform Ning.com. And we’ll have entertainment, valuable opportunities to meet your colleagues, and some fun surprises.

One especially good bit of news is that we’ve reduced the ticket price this year to make it easier for you to attend and learn from these inspiring innovators. The early-bird 2-day pass for one person is $695, and the group rate is just $245. Register now to lock in these deals.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Laurel
Laurel Touby
founder & cyberhostess | mediabistro.com”

Communication Next Time

While I appreciate the “personal invitation” once I scroll past the fold I realize I am really not that special. “Personal invitation” is camouflaged marketing lingo for there is a field in our database named FirstName. If this was indeed “personal”,  Laurel Touby would have sent me an email not mailer@mediabistro.com. It is these small things that differentiate building real trust and just asking for the sale.

Next time just send me, and the other 100k people in your database, a more informative email and skip the personal business, it’s not personal, it’s business—and I understand we’re not bff’s.

WHERE’S THE DISASTER?

I, like much of wired America, order many things from Amazon. I have very few complaints—except this.

It wasn’t raining on January 27th; it was neither too hot nor too cold. Everything was perfect about the day except I needed dual monitors to get started on a content migration project and needed (4) Tritton TRI-UV100 SEE2 USB 2.0 SVGA Adapters and they weren’t in the office when I arrived. This created a wee bit of stress that was further amplified by the lack of knowledge concerning a potential “natural disaster.”

This got me:

a. Worried about the UPS driver.

b. Wondering if a tornado was headed towards me.

c. Wrestling with navigation at weather.com (which actually is a disaster).

Communication Next Time

Next time tell me my package is running late and give me a realistic date of when it’s going to arrive— “Delayed”, is just fine.

Some people obsess over the idea of an empty email inbox, doing everything possible to achieve that Zen-state of blankness.

It’s a worthy goal. Getting the email tiger by the tail, instead of having it the other way around will make you feel just a tiny bit more in control of the maelstrom of data flying at you every day.

Here’s a few more ways to seize your digital destiny from the djinns of chaos.

1. If you hate your webmail server at work, and who doesn’t, set up a Gmail account and have all of your work email forwarded there. It’s easy to access from anywhere, has massive amounts of storage and some neat organizing tools. I have one acquaintance who conducts all of his business from the Gmail account. Just don’t tell your network administrator that you’re doing this.
2. Organize your bookmarks. It’s probably too late to organize the ones already in your browser, but if you do take that plunge, you’ll never regret it. Make some folders and use them. If it’s really too late to save that patient, it’s never to late to open a social bookmarking account with delicious.
3. Organize your passwords. Don’t ever waste some poor schmo’s time in customer service again because you forgot your password. There’s really no excuse and you are keeping someone who really needs help waiting even longer. Someday, that person may be you. The rage you prevent may be your own.

One final Zen thought, from the philosopher Basho: “A flute with no holes is not a flute, but a doughnut with no hole is a Danish.”
— Jonathan

Last Sunday, The New York Times Style section featured Gwyneth Paltrow’s new newsletter/blog project, GOOP.

GOOP (Gwyneth’s initials, although we never find out what the double O’s stand for) features G-Palt’s wisdom on everything from family-friendly recipes to assembling a fail-proof mommy uniform. I visited the site Sunday morning right after I read the article, and I signed up for the newsletter (who wouldn’t want banana-nut muffin recipes and fashion advice and from Gwynnie?).

But apparently the GOOP team wasn’t expecting the article to run that Sunday. In the Style section. As the lead feature.

Fair enough. I’d give them some time to scramble for more server space.

A few hours later, same error message.

And today, four days later, same error message.

Where is Gwyneth’s web team? How many hundreds, thousands, millions of subscribers have they lost from this oversight?

UPDATE: Strangely enough, I just received a newsletter from GOOP, as though their “something went terribly wrong” never happened. What??

TAKEAWAY: Crazy that we even have to say this, but it’s never okay to skip any form of testing (load testing, browser testing, user testing and re-testing, etc.). Never. But especially when you know you are about to receive national media attention.

–Britta

After re-posting this story — Content Management Systems Just Don’t Work — forwarded to me by the ever-capable robotics ninja/programmer/genius/good guy Gabe Hollombe. Destry Wion RT’ed and mentioned on Twitter to “see comments” in said story.  The story, written by Clay at Sunlight Labs, argues that it’s more cost-and-feature effective to hire a programmer to make a custom CMS, than it is to work within the constraints of an off-the-shelf solution.

*Having wrestled with many CMS solutions, from Vignette to WordPress, I concur, “Do you concur?”

But if you keep scrolling—past the last period—the story continues and evolves. Different CMS aficianados shot back in the comments and a meta conversation began to bubble and brew. This, and that 100 dances in 100 days in 100 locations video, are the reasons I love the web. First, I get a well-written/researched article about CMS solutions vs. custom development and then (bonus), I get content threads splintering off into: new solutions, the question of what a CMS is actually supposed to do, security issues, costs and “power pie.”

Personally, I don’t put too much weight into how many ✮’s an article has, how the author is ranked or the number of Diggs a story receives—if there are a lot of comments, my interest is piqued. When the story touches a nerve it is passed around and as it is passed around the POV changes and as the POV changes we get a sneak peek into what others see, feel and know/don’t know.

Today, we are in such a rush to present the latest nizzer info we have found, or broadcast triumphantly from our cardboard podiums that we forget the benefit of this web thing is the iterative, additive nature of the conversation. I too am guilty of the simple “cool article dude”, comment. But when an article educates or inspires and the ensuing comments build atop what the article started—that just lights my fire.

So go on, create/find an interesting story, Tinyurl it, tweet it through Tweetdeck, push it through Friendfeed and into the Facebook-Twitter app. Perhaps the story will get blogged about, and then pushed to Digg and/or mentioned in other blog posts, which will get pushed into Facebook again and LinkedIn. Don’t stop that process; just don’t forget, as Destry Wion reminded me—a lot happens past that last period.

–Ian

Word nerds love anagrams, from the simple rearrangements of:

Elvis = Lives and New York Times = Monkeys Write

to the dizzying symphony of this quote from Kurt Vonnegut:

Just because some of us can read and write and do a little math, that doesn’t mean we deserve to conquer the universe. = A masquerade can cover a sense of what is real to deceive us; to be unjaded and not lost, we must, then, determine truth.

Why do we believe in anagramming?

Eat Media = Idea Team

Ian Alexander = Adrenaline Ax

If you want to make your own anagrams, head over to Anu Garg’s fabled Wordsmith.org and get cranking. The truth never hurts.

— Jonathan

Amazon.com is doing its part to reduce wrap-rage.

What’s wrap-rage, you may ask?

You may not have heard the phrase, but you have certainly experienced it. Think of the last time you bought a memory card for anything. The product itself is tiny, but the last one I purchased came in a triple-layer hard plastic clamshell that was all but impossible to crack without power tools. DVDs are a pain too, but you truly have not experienced wrap-rage until you’ve tried to unbox a child’s toy.

Wrap rage is very dangerous. In 2001, there were 204,000 injuries attributed to product packaging. That’s more than double the number attributed to skateboards. Consumer Reports even issues “Oyster Awards” for the most fiendishly designed packaging. During one recent test, a Barbie doll took 15 minutes and 10 seconds to extricate from its Inferno-like rings of protection.

Amazon.com is helping reduce wrap-rage at the source by introducing  “frustration-free packaging.” While the product list is still quite limited, it does include memory cards and many of the more diabolically-mummified Fisher-Price toys. Gone are the plastic clamshells, wire twist ties and miles of tape. In their place is a simple cardboard box mailed in a simple envelope. Huge added bonus: much less plastic in the waste stream.

Thought for the day: Can people easily reach the information on your site, or is it caught in the electronic version of the plastic clamshell—visible, but teasingly just out of reach?

In this ever more digital age, it’s a compelling question.

Google is making a massive effort to digitize library collections from around the world, bringing millions of tomes into the collective ether that is the internet.

But are they still books once they’ve been coded into ones and zeros?

Virginia Heffernan addressed the question from another angle in her wonderful blog, The Medium, in the Sunday New York Times. The question was first offered to her by her young son after he’d completed reading something online and was asked by the computer, “Did you like this book?” He balked and refused to answer the question, insisting that what he’d just read — definition of the publisher aside — was not a book.

Heffernan goes on to agree, even though she’s an admitted devotee of both Amazon’s Kindle eBook reader and her Blackberry. Both may present text, but neither offers the same experience.

Don’t believe it? Take a tour around the web. Look at how some of the most hard-wired digiterati are using blogs, Tweets and other electronic signals to promote something printed on paper and bound into what we all think of as a book.

Is Google’s library going to be an impressive achievement? Absolutely. Is it going to be filled with information? More than any one person could ever see. But it won’t have a single book in it.

Will a Kindle ever offer the sensory intimacy of words on paper? Even if the new Kindle can somehow send out a little puff of new paperback smell (Go ahead, pick up a pocket paperback off your shelf and crack it open. Evocative, no?). Even if you could drop it in the sand without panic and even if they installed a little device that would whip out and give you a nasty paper cut once in a blue moon, it still would not be a book.

— Jonathan

From the “It’s-never-too-late-to-learn-a-new-trick” category, the Vatican has launched its very own YouTube Channel.

It’s pretty basic so far, but you can have it translated into Italian, German or Spanish. Currently, there are only 18 videos on the site and they are almost all of Pope Benedict XVI speaking, but the potential for the site is amazing.

There are links to Radio Vaticana, the papal state’s radio service, Centro Televisivo Vaticano, the Vatican’s television station, the Vatican’s official website and the official website of the Vatican state (in Italian only).

On the YouTube channel, I’d like to see way more from the history side of things, as well as a video library of Pope John Paul II’s greatest hits, but it’s early in the process.

What happens next will say a lot. Launching a social media portal is one thing; nurturing a social media portal is another. How much are you investing in the care and feeding of your social media assets?

— Jonathan