I know there are thousands of absolute experts in Web 2.0 and web user behavior patterns -- they check into my inbox daily with pitches and promises of their supreme powers.
But I'm not sure it's something anyone has a handle on yet.
I have been involved in web site builds, from the content and user experience side, for 15 years now. I am a museum piece. I didn't create the internet, but I think I was passing through Tennesee when Al Gore did it.
Each site build has offered previously unthinkable opportunities, a complete new set of technologies and a much larger audience. All the "firsts" we were so "out there" with then are borderline pathetic to even mention today.
One of the only commonalities is the inevitable entrenchment of "that stuff applies to other companies but not our product/ clientle/ way of doing business" attitudes.
Once the site is built, the traffic grows and new markets are established the argument is moot. But even today I commisserate with colleagues in the same defensive posture.
Trying to tell management that establishing a "best practices among the competitive set" to design your site is like asking an auto maker to launch next year's model based on what was hot five years ago.
The most recent quarterly newspaper circulation figures were released this week and the declines in circulation continue. An industry trade group is creating a new formula to count beyond circulation to justify ad rates. The model is broke. We can click our heels as many times as we please, but we're not in Kansas anymore and we're not going back.
Not everyone will be an early adopter and nothing can replace the feel an ink nib gliding across a wonderfully textured fine stationery, but the fact that you've read this babble this far is the absolute proof that this is not a new vehicle, but a new and continuously redefined community.
Charlie and I went to Kings Court, a forever fixture of a restaurant just up the street, for dinner tonight. We walked home in a chilly rain that set my mind on comfort foods- sweet, dessert comfort foods.
"Junket" popped up from the deeper recesses of my childhood. It's safe to say I haven't had the curdled milk custard in more than 30 years or seen it on the grocery shelves anywhere I have lived. I really, really liked the vanilla, I thought as I entered "Junket" as a search term.
The website told me the rennert custard was originally made in Denmark, but has been made in upstate New York since 1911. One click took me to their store and I quickly filled my cart at $1.50 a box - heavy on the vanilla, but a few raspberry and chocolate for nights like this one yet to come.
Are nostaglic 40-somethings their target market? Did research tell them I'd be back someday as long as they juiced up their search optimization?
Or is it just the way it is?


Copyright 2007 Judi Griggs