Great businessmen know how to follow the trends and strike when the iron is hot. However, great minds follow their own beliefs and trends seem to follow. You see it in the fashion world all the time, one person can wear their collar up and it seems to catch on all over the place. Is the idea of a popped collar anything new? Of course not. Hell, Eric Cantona sported it back in the early 90’s and I’m sure he wasn’t the first.
For some people it caught on and for others it didn’t. Very few ideas are new and the rest of them just follow a cycle. That cycle is the trend and in every industry of the web you see over 90% of the companies falling at the end of the trend. It seems so many of us fail to see the obvious and capitalize on it or we just don’t realize that the trend is over.
Blogs are nothing new. The revolution they have created on the web is nothing short of spectacular. However, they are ingrained in people’s minds now so claiming them as the next big thing isn’t effective. They have already been the next big thing many times over. Email newsletters were the next big thing years before that. Community sites and forums have always been the next big thing.
Some people like to pretend they can see a trend coming. Some people actually act on the upcoming trend. The rest fight for position at the bottom tail of the trend. There is a problem with trends and that is we tend to latch on to them and once we do that we can’t let go. That doesn’t mean you should give up on something. Blogs won’t die and for example, blog networks shouldn’t give up on them. However, continually thinking that the blogging trend as it is right now is going to remain strong will only leave you hurting later.
Musicians do this with their music and the one-hit wonders become that way because their music doesn’t evolve. Blogs become that way because their content doesn’t change (not the topics being discussed, but the content itself has to move on). This site gains in traffic every month but it isn’t exponential growth. I’m sure Kottke and Gruber would say the same thing. Nothing has really changed with these sites. We have latched onto one trend and haven’t let go.
That isn’t a bad thing though. We do what we love and that’s very important to maintain. However without adapting there is no growth and for many sites no growth (exponential) means death. Here’s a hint though, People and Communication will always be the next greatest trend.
Last week’s Women 2.0 seemed to strike a nerve with a lot of people and most of them were women. Glad to see the fellas jump onboard, but I digress. Two comments about 9rules and myself struck a nerve with me this weekend and it made me realize how much people still don’t get the web. Wait, let me rephrase that, how much geeks and the web elite still don’t get the web.
The first comment I won’t link to since he didn’t link to us and I never liked him anyways. This comment was made in response to FeedBurner launching feed “networks” which I guess are competitors to 9rules if you think 9rules is just about grouping sites together to place them in a feed with some ads.
…interesting move, sort of FM or 9rulesish…well 9rulesish if 9rules either gets it’s act together and offers advertising options…
I’ll have to remember that. After 14 months in existence we still haven’t gotten our act together because we don’t offer a solution to advertise on our Member’s sites. Go figure. Sure it would be great if 9rules was making millions right now and a kickass ad solution for all our members would rock as well, but we haven’t developed one (admittedly back in the day we did talk about one and start on it). If 9rules fails for not making money then that’s just bad business, but if we fail because we don’t understand people and don’t do what we set out to do then that’s just bad common sense.
Let’s not get into the details of the resources needed to run an effective ad network because if you think advertisers just pop out of no where to sign up you have a few business books to read up on.
This next comment was made by the great Tomas Jogin and is in reference to this video I made on online lingo spoken out loud.
You are making a fool of yourself. Not just with this video, but with _all_ your videos. You don’t come off as funny, just dumb. I’m telling you this because I think that if _I_ was making a fool of myself like you are doing now, I’d want someone to tell me so. Seriously.
Now what in the hell do these comments have in common? They ignore the people element that is so crucial to 9rules and the web in general. To me, 9rules getting its act together would mean that we weren’t helping Members connect with each other and readers or helping readers find sites in the genres they are looking for. Me acting a fool is simply that, me acting a fool. Mark Fusco calls it shock value, but I just call it me being me.
What you see in that video is what you would see if you met me in real life. Certain geeks and web elite might not appreciate it. I (which also means 9rules) do not follow conventional methods of “doing” the web. I don’t get paid to be funny, smart, annoying or any other adjective. I get paid to be me and the same goes for my team.
So many people love the web because they can pretend to be somebody they are not or maybe they get to connect with other geeks like themselves. The problem is the geeks all of a sudden think they are god’s gift to the internet and instead of being the outcasts have cast themselves as the superstars. But that’s not the web and that’s not real life. We love Flickr, but there are bigger photo sites out there. We love del.icio.us as well, but how many of your family members know about it?
Mike coined the term Deaf Echo two weeks ago and it’s the part of the blogosphere where people only comment on the same sites that are part of their circle of friends. Nothing wrong with that, but don’t start to think that your circle has all of a sudden become the whole web. Business and life in general revolves around the relationships you make and that means that people have to understand you. These videos, no matter how foolish I look or how stupid you may think they are, help me connect to people I otherwise couldn’t.
You can’t honestly think that anyone else besides geeks (it’s okay, I’m a geek as well) and people knee deep in the web follow this site right? I could go back to secluding myself and sounding pretentious (maybe I still do that anyways…), but there are interesting people out there who wouldn’t be able to relate to me. I used to be the 35 year old white guy on Whitespace and now I’m the 12 year old kid on 9rules. Funny thing is, both of those personas are me and that’s what I am trying to get people to understand.
Why people wish to classify Web 2.0 as one that involves tagging, RSS, XML, APIs and other technologies that the general public just doesn’t care about is beyond me. You don’t want a web 2.0 site. You want a people site. Sit down and look at the largest sites on the web today and show me how many of them can claim that their coolest feature is tagging or RSS. I can’t connect to the first commentor or to Tomas because we just don’t see eye-to-eye, but if they can’t relate to what I do then honestly those aren’t the people I want to connect to. Many people who read this won’t relate to that because they will think you have to be a certain way to succeed and that has never been the case. Go ahead and be you, some will like it and some won’t, but isn’t that how the real world works anyways?
Final question: How big of a role do the web elite and geeks play in the success of Google, Yahoo, YouTube, MSN, MySpace, Amazon and eBay?
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Something interesting happened to me the other day. While I was browsing around the web reading all the great Web 2.0 sites out there, I realized that a majority of these applications cater to men. Not because of the purpose that they serve since they are “made” for all sexes, but being designed, programmed and coded by men there usually isn’t an ounce of female input involved in the product. Now that may be par for the course, but isn’t that a bit strange?
Look at both MySpace and YouTube and you will find that the people with the most friends and watched videos are women. If you have any sort of knowledge about today’s economy you know that women control a majority of all major purchasing decisions. I know at my parent’s house nothing major gets bought without my Mom’s go ahead (sorry Dad). Same with my grandparents.
Looking at the MySpace pages of my friends that are girls and I find that they put a lot more time and effort into customizing their pages than the guys. Admittedly I am sometimes stuck with the stereotype in my head that men are superior to women when it comes to technology (male ego will never leave it seems), but it’s funny when I hear guys ask a girl “how did you get that on your MySpace page?”
Let’s take this argument a step further and look at product design. Apple’s iPod had a great design from the beginning which could easily appeal to both sexes. When Apple released the version of the iPod Mini with multiple colors rarely did I hear guys talking about which colors they were going to get, they were focused on specs. However, the idea of having a personalized color of an iPod seemed to appeal to the females and I wouldn’t be surprised to see if more women owned iPods than men.
Apple’s competition could match the specs of the iPod and could even offer a lower price but, you could tell that the designs that were coming out were all about what the men thought was good design. This is just one of the gajillion reasons that I brought Tyme White on board at 9rules. She does everything that a guy can do in her position (and more), but also offers something a man could never do and that is give us the female perspective on things that we so desperately needed. Now we still have a long way to go to understanding where she is coming from on certain things, but believe me when I say we are starting to get on the same wavelength no matter how much adjusting it takes.
Ever go to a club and wonder why women get all the good deals (2-4-1s, drink free till 1am, etc)? It’s because men don’t like going to clubs where women aren’t around so it’s essential to get the women to your club first. Dating sites follow the same creed. Celebrity gossip/popculture sites are some of the most highly traficked sites on the web. The funny thing about Calacanis paying people to submit stories to Netscape is that maybe the way to beat Digg isn’t by taking the best submitters around, but by appealing to women and the other demographics that Digg doesn’t even touch.
So next time you design something or have an idea about a new site, ask a female what she thinks about it and you will get a honest answer which will go a long way in letting you know how successful you will be. Males think all of our buddies ideas are good so really we aren’t much of a help to each other. However, if it doesn’t appeal to the ladies then it probably shouldn’t appeal to you either. And don’t think this entry was about equal opportunity for women. No, no, my interests are far more selfish. This was more about opening my blind eyes to opportunities that have been around since the dawn of time and how stupid I am for just now recognizing them. Yeah Mom I know, you told me so.
Hot on the heels of the recent Wisdump redesign I figured I would take the design momentum over to ScrivsTyme (ST) and finally give it the much needed facelift that it has been crying for. The previous version, aka DooDooBrown, was just horrendous to look at both aesthetically and from a structural standpoint. It was setup as a basic two-column blog, but the site has outgrown that structure so a change was needed.
ST has become a community within itself. Part blog, part podcast (video and audio) and a thriving forum meant that a layout was needed that conveyed all of that information without overwhelming the readers. Structurally I like the direction the site has gone. Interesting enough the audience wanted a busier site because they felt it would be easier to access information and I can now understand where they are coming from. The podcast itself, still being the dominant form of content, gets its own column on the left while the meta sections of the site garner the right two columns.
To top it off I wanted to add a bit of testosterone to the site so I created another version which can be easily accessed through the theme switcher in the upper-right corner. Due to the color scheme I chose (white, blue, and pink) a smooth transition to a darker scheme was easy. Just a few minor color changes and I came up with the dark version.
As usual there are some loose ends that I need to tie up, but go on over and have a look. Listen to a podcast or two to see if you like what’s going on. Just because two geeks run it, don’t think for a second that geek content is involved. I mean if you are interested in hooking up with Tyme White I even offer some tips in the latest show.
Unfortunately for me and luckily for you I don’t have anymore sites to undesign, but it was definitely fun getting the structure for both ST and Wisdump down. In the future I would love to get a professional to run their hand over the site and give it their finishing touch. For now though I’ll just go back to sticking with content.
