3 ms·

Are you really that lazy that you can't Google around a little bit?

by markbao 16y ago

mcantor 16y ago
What I meant (and failed) to express is not that I eschewed Googling because I'm lazy, but because I had no reason to Google. In my completely non-expert world view, I think that blogs (and websites in general) have three types of visitors: Committed, Unqualified Leads, and Uninterested. Committed visitors will dutifully read and re-read all available information, regardless of whether it is presented clearly. These are people with a personal interest or responsibility related to the subject matter, like devoted Apple users reading Steve Jobs' latest address, or competitive Street Fighter players reading about how to execute a special move or winning strategy. As soon as they detect that the information is within their purview, they will consume all of it thoroughly. Uninterested visitors are simply not in the target demographic; if they clicked on the link at all, they will close the window as soon as they process that the content is not relevant to them. Unqualified visitors are people who might be interested, or maybe even want to be interested, but require extra context or a "hook" to get them going. I feel like "visitor interest" is a spectrum, with "committed" on one end, "uninterested" on the other, and "unqualified" representing the vast gradient chasm between them. TL;DR: I am probably not the only reader that Brooks Review lost by catering only to committed visitors. Long version: Clicking the link for the article, I was an unqualified visitor. I literally had no idea what "Things" was, so I thought "RIP Things" might have been some kind of metaphysical rant about getting rid of superfluous material possessions. Instead I was dropped, in medias res, into a contextless rant about OTA sync (what does that have to do with "Things", I thought?), and how it's "still a few months away." From what? For whom? Then he transitions jarringly into "The Wallpaper." At that point I knew I had to click on the Cultured Code link, because obviously I was missing too much. Upon clicking through, I was faced with an equally contextless long-winded article about "cloud sync" that made no mention whatsoever of wallpaper. That's when I gave up. All of this could have been very easily remedied if Cultured Code's site had a tiny slogan or product description at the top of their page, or if the Brooks Review guy had a link to something explaining OmniFocus, or a blurb on the page explaining if he has any stake or connections to OmniFocus. So, to be clear, I did not Google for "Things," because long before the source article mentions that "Things" is something that you can purchase and interact with (and thus, perhaps Google for), I had already given up reading, because I didn't know what OmniFocus was, what wallpaper he was talking about, who the article was written by, who the linked article was written by, or why OTA sync was a big deal, or in which world of computing OTA sync was being discussed, and neither Brooks Review nor Cultured Code had designed their sites in such a way as to explain why I should care.

Are you really that lazy that you can't Google around a little bit?

by markbao 16y ago

Are you really that lazy that you can't Google around a little bit?

What I meant (and failed) to express is not that I eschewed Googling because I'm lazy, but because I had no reason to Google. In my completely non-expert world view, I think that blogs (and websites in general) have three types of visitors: Committed, Unqualified Leads, and Uninterested. Committed visitors will dutifully read and re-read all available information, regardless of whether it is presented clearly. These are people with a personal interest or responsibility related to the subject matter, like devoted Apple users reading Steve Jobs' latest address, or competitive Street Fighter players reading about how to execute a special move or winning strategy. As soon as they detect that the information is within their purview, they will consume all of it thoroughly. Uninterested visitors are simply not in the target demographic; if they clicked on the link at all, they will close the window as soon as they process that the content is not relevant to them. Unqualified visitors are people who might be interested, or maybe even want to be interested, but require extra context or a "hook" to get them going. I feel like "visitor interest" is a spectrum, with "committed" on one end, "uninterested" on the other, and "unqualified" representing the vast gradient chasm between them. TL;DR: I am probably not the only reader that Brooks Review lost by catering only to committed visitors. Long version: Clicking the link for the article, I was an unqualified visitor. I literally had no idea what "Things" was, so I thought "RIP Things" might have been some kind of metaphysical rant about getting rid of superfluous material possessions. Instead I was dropped, in medias res, into a contextless rant about OTA sync (what does that have to do with "Things", I thought?), and how it's "still a few months away." From what? For whom? Then he transitions jarringly into "The Wallpaper." At that point I knew I had to click on the Cultured Code link, because obviously I was missing too much. Upon clicking through, I was faced with an equally contextless long-winded article about "cloud sync" that made no mention whatsoever of wallpaper. That's when I gave up. All of this could have been very easily remedied if Cultured Code's site had a tiny slogan or product description at the top of their page, or if the Brooks Review guy had a link to something explaining OmniFocus, or a blurb on the page explaining if he has any stake or connections to OmniFocus. So, to be clear, I did not Google for "Things," because long before the source article mentions that "Things" is something that you can purchase and interact with (and thus, perhaps Google for), I had already given up reading, because I didn't know what OmniFocus was, what wallpaper he was talking about, who the article was written by, who the linked article was written by, or why OTA sync was a big deal, or in which world of computing OTA sync was being discussed, and neither Brooks Review nor Cultured Code had designed their sites in such a way as to explain why I should care.