Lately I’ve noticed something eerie as I go to type in the home URL of some of my favorite sites. My browser’s history, which goes back nine days, does not remember the home page. As we trend away from home page supremacy, global navigation becomes all the more important.

Derek Powazek has a three point plan for planning the most crucial element of your user interface:

1. Never, ever link to the page you’re on
2. Show where you are
3. Think before you link

Searching and other content filters (like RSS) are only going to become more prevalent. We can’t count on visitors streaming in our front door. We have to be ready for them climbing in the windows, or walking up from the basement.

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.”

If you want lots of people to buy your product, sign up for your newsletter, or just visit your blog, get rid of anything in their way. Unfortunately, I think a lot of accidental obstructions remain in processes because its creators and implementers fail to critically consider each barrier.

Example of the moment: Yahoo! Publisher Network requires tax and payment information before they’ll let you have ad code to put on your site. For me, this meant closing the window. I was ready to publish some of their ads, giving them money and their advertisers traffic.

By contrast, Google’s AdSense product only requires you to put in tax and payment information when they’re ready to pay you. And what a motivator I imagine that is, knowing they’re ready to send you a check. And what’s the worst that can happen if a publisher never fills out the tax and payment information? Google keeps the money.

Since Yahoo! is working on creating a higher-quality network, it is possible that this barrier is intentional. Could it be that by requiring tax information, Yahoo! gets more dedicated publishers? Maybe.

If that is the case, at least the obstacle has been considered and purposely left in place. At least they critically considered the barrier.

Feel free to share your own examples–I don’t require you to register to leave a comment.

Update: Yes, I realize YPN is a beta program. Consider this feedback. 🙂