Reading about Gutenberg, movable type, and printing in general always makes me think about just how far we’ve come in the realm of communications and the ability to disseminate information. As many of you know, I’m a letterpress printer, using machines that aren’t much different from the ones Gutenberg himself worked with five hundred, yep, that’s 500! years ago!!!
On the other end of spectrum, though, is the work that I’m lucky enough to do every day in the realm of electronic communications. Read the Wired, This Day In Tech, article, and allow your mind to wander, thinking about, imagining, the world of lead type, and heavy cast iron that was needed to get a message out there. Then think back a bit further to a time of hand scribes, and no dissemination at all except what could be passed word-of-mouth.
It’s kind of hard to imagine especially in a world rapid-fire tweets, Facebook status updates, RSS feeds, and blog posts just like this one, that not too long ago there was no Web, or iPhone, or Blackberry or anything else that permitted such awesome real-time, in the moment, communication. Just sayin’… pretty awesome.
Our struggle now isn’t the media, but finding the attention to dedicate to it all… Exciting stuff.
I’ve been doing this blog on here for less than a year, and to read some of the points on here that Adam makes is great for not just myself, but for anyone looking to start a blog, or looking to integrate blogs into their work or communications plans.
As I was cruising through my Google Reader today I had a realization — Don’t provide an RSS feed to your content, if you’re only going to provide a teaser title, sans the actual content, that links to your Web site. Yes, it’s true, you can get better measurements, and better ad hits if people visit your site, but if that’s the motivator, might I recommend FeedBurner (for measuring feed stats) and RSS feed ads to monetize the feed.
Otherwise, content providers just create another irritating step that I’ll breeze past nearly every time if only out of spite. The site in question is that of a large PR organization that I’ve talked about on here before, but try as they might they just don’t seem to get the digital perspective. I know they’re old school, and they’d like to folks to go to their site, and probably even read their newsletter, too… which may even be available via a SASE on printed paper and you might even get it in 6-8 weeks, come on… this is the Web, and the point is to spread your ideas, your perspective, and your voice out there, not lock it down behind another cumbersome layer of linkbait just to lock folks into your site. This is so very old school print media and Web 0.5 at best…
So the new rule for RSS Feeds is this: include the content in the feed, even if only a few paragraphs, or don’t bother offering an RSS feed, at all, as you’ll just make the people who want to read your content irritated. After all an irritated reader won’t be a reader of any kind for very long.
Certainly, it’s a generational thing, or maybe just a communications preference, but for me, I just don’t like talking on the phone like I did when I was a teenager or in the early years of cell phone ownership. Send me an email. Email is unobtrusive, and allows for the most basic relay of data. I can respond at my leisure. I can organize my thoughts, and put them out there in front of me before committing to them. I can have a record of what I sent, because you never know when you might need a record of what you’ve said. Unlike phone calls from strangers, where I hang up almost immediately, I seriously consider and think about email propositions from strangers. Email just works really well. Sure there are folks who talk about the death of email by texting, and texting, sometimes, is an even more basic relay of data, especially when lenghty thoughtful statements aren’t needed, but that’s for another post. Bottom line: Send me an email, and I’ll guarantee that I’ll read it; entice me and I might even respond.
As the perfect near dovetail to yesterday’s post on the evolution of communication on the Web, I stumbled upon this video when logging into Yahoo! Mail this morning.
I don’t love the music, but I thought the video was cute, and a nice addition to the discussion about the evolution of communication on the Web.
However, I’m uncertain as to how this contributes to the issues that Yahoo! is facing as an organization. Generally, it’s taboo in the Web world to look back for any reason except to laugh, and mock oneself, quite different from the sentimentality of “the way we were” state of mind, as if watching a child grow through home videos. Yet, this video has that same kind of sentiment. It makes me wonder if this video didn’t start life as some kind of Yahoo! Mail team building exercise to cheer on the staff to keep them moving forward; I’m extrapolating, but it does make me wonder. Interesting.
