Simplicity Rules

When my head is burried in a topic, it’s easy to think that everybody else is in the same place. Of course, that isn’t true. When I feel lost in a sea of everybody, it helps to remember that it’s not actually everybody.

Sometimes I read Webmaster forums, and I’m perplexed at how popular it is for participants to create their own Webmaster resources. Why? Because they see it as a lucrative business to be in because everybody cares about it like they do.

I’m not saying Webmasters don’t want resources, but the crowd of people interested in something you’re passionate about is never as big as you imagine.

I’ve been enjoying a series of posts called “Ask Skeptic’s Mom.” A Web guy asks his mom what a technology is and even gives her time to research it:

• “What’s RSS?”
• “What’s a Wiki?”

If you don’t know what those are, his mom is not the person to ask. It’s been said plenty elsewhere, but it’s pretty obvious from just those posts that the non-Web-Developer audience is difficult for Web Developers to envision.

The underlying problem here isn’t in finding better definitions. We don’t even need better user education. Most people don’t want to use a Wiki or RSS, they want to “use the Internet.” We need to recognize that our “everybody” does not mean everybody.

Particle Tree makes a good conclusion in their piece about The 1% Rule, but in the process makes a dangerous inference:

This figure may be frightening to web businesses that rely solely on user generated content or developer interaction. They’re essentially competing for a fraction of the 1% of traffic out there that’s willing to actively contribute anything to any cause.

The actual 1% rule says that if your site has user-created content, only one out of 100 of your users will participate by creating the content. But the total number of people in the world who will contribute to any site is much higher than 1%.

This distinction is important. To chase after some magical group of people and try to get them to join your site is futile. If you’re a social network, follow the rules. No matter what, do good stuff.

Then, identify the one percent of your users who contribute, and be really nice to them.

Thanks to Elliot for pointing me to this article.

There are few people who have benefitted more from online video than David Hasselhoff. For such a mainstream guy, he’s still somehow tailor-made for The Long Tail.

But this is really more a note about a new Google video feature than an ode to a TV star. Move over YouTube, because The Goog lets you link directly to any second in a video without having to download the whole dang thing. Paul Kedrosky has a much better example using a long Charlie Rose interview (redundant!), but I thought I’d stick to David Hasselhoff.

My top three moments in David Hasslehoff’s cover of “Hooked on a Feelin'”

1. Dressed as a polar bear, he catches a fish, puts it in his mouth, and runs away from several versions of himself.
2. He spins a video cube on his finger, Globetrotters-style.
3. Close-up celebratory fist, as if to say, “Yes! I am this good”.

Regardless of whether Hasselhoff is that good, this new Google Video feature is pretty cool. The only thing that would make it better is if it had voice commands: “Kit, take me to the polar bear scene.”