I love reading Scott Karp’s Publishing 2.0. Whenever Scott blogs, he manages to kick up some dust with his non-politically correct attacks on Web 2.0 trends.
I also love the fact that Scott works for a traditional print media company that is itself coming to grips with the amazingly rapid transformations in the publishing industry. It’s hard for dead-tree publishers to grok the new lingo and quite a few old-timers are ducking for cover hoping this whole Web 2.0 business will blow over. Scott is clearly nudging his own company in new directions while maintaining sympathy for the guys hiding in the basement.
In other words, Scott clearly has a foot in both publishing camps — one which is racing ahead of its readers with all kinds of Ajaxian gizmos and the other which is baffled by this whole Web 2.0 thing. Today Scott chides one of the vanguards of the dead-tree world, Newsweek magazine, which is making a belated attempt to offer customized RSS feeds.
Aside from the fact that Newsweek’s customized RSS reader doesn’t seem to work very well, Scott takes on the language that Newsweek uses. First, he derides the magazine’s use of the word “content.”
First of all, the term “content” is very media company-centric. Most people don’t think of themselves as consumers of “content.” They read magazines, watch TV, surf the web, and listen to music.
Then he rails against OPML.
What percentage of Newsweek readers do you think know what OPML is? Maybe 0.0001%?
In an earlier piece, Scott deconstructed the terms “blog” and “user-generated media” and more or less found them wanting. I point out all these terminology criticisms because the words Scott dismisses are scary to old-time publishers.
These terms are new, they sound complicated and they require a new mind-set. Very, very frightening indeed to publishing houses that are used to cranking out the stuff and getting people to pay for it (through subscriptions or advertising). Some of these publishers have even gone so far as to build major Internet presences and think that their work ends there.
I disagree, however, with Scott’s notion that readers are as unfamiliar with or as scared off by those terms as he contends. For one thing, young adults fully understand such things as RSS or the term “content” — just hang out at any university for a while to see for yourself.
For another, the media world is changing and consumers are changing along with it. Even old folks are starting to grasp the difference between downloadable music and the radio, for example. They no longer think in terms of generic “music listening,” as Scott might have you believe.
Even most middle-age Internet users know the difference between surfing the web and “feed readers,” even if they don’t use the term “reader.” So, why not start talking in terms that distinguish among the growing number of ways available to consume video, audio and text material?
I’m not advocating that publishers ignore the fact that much of what’s happening on the Internet is too new for most consumers to understand. I’m saying that the real fear of all these Web 2.0 gee-gaws comes from publishers, not consumers. A Newsweek online visitor will ignore altogether its specialized RSS reader if the whole concept of RSS is too intimidating. On the other hand, a visitor accustomed to RSS will figure things out pretty quickly.
Rather than try to stuff the increasingly varied kinds of material (text, audio, video…text-with-audio, video-with-text, mash-ups containing text, audio and video) into the old labels (watch TV, surf the web, listen to music), why not use new terms?
Cynthia Brumfield at 6:01 PM|Comments(1)
Cythina, first of all, I'm sure most Newsweek readers are more than capable of picking up a new set of technical jargon -- that's not the issue. The issue is whether you are making people's lives easier or more difficult. It's about meeting people where they are instead of forcing them to come to you.
But the terminology is the least of my issues. The real Web 2.0 challenge for the average person is finding the information they want in the ever growing sea, and Newsweek has done NOTHING as an erstwhile "trusted brand" to help its readers towards that end. That is the real failure here. The terminology is just a sideshow.
And with all due respect, Cythinia, YOU are the one who introduced the "fear" meme into this. I'm not afraid, and the average person is not afraid. To me the problem with terminology has to do with complexification, obfuscation, and hype.
I'm always fascinated by how mis-paraphrasing of what I write reflects the biases of the paraphraser. But I'm more than happy to serve as that foil.
Posted by: Scott Karp at April 15, 2006 9:51 PM
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