Musings & Meanderings

Compiling statistics on internet user demographics is a relatively young field. The information that is available publicly is quite limited. Specialized demographic information is expensive, compiled by research professionals for specific industry users. Problems with survey based user information include self-selection, which refers to the lack of control over who responds to any given survey. That’s why being aware of consumer statistics and trends is important, but personally knowing your users much more so.

Interpretation and forecasting is, and always will be, as much art as science. The entrepreneur may consult a brilliant analyst, although nowhere near as often as the businessman will, but the analyst can also learn much from the seasoned entrepreneur. Looking at this kind of data from the vantage point of web development vs real estate development, its potential application does increase. In real estate a typical urban development takes years, whereas on the web a new destination or add on format can be created in weeks. The traditional skills of an entrepreneur include instant problem solving and the ability to turn on a dime, and I see interpretation of close-to-real-time consumer data as an important skill and another emerging specialty.

Any new business venture must know their marketplace, and that knowledge includes size and number of competitors as well factors such as barriers to entry. My own experience is that there is rarely a similarly detailed snapshot from the target user’s pov. New businesses on the web are started mostly by advanced users for each other, but offering a product or service to consumers who are already getting lots of what they want online is a pretty crowded place to be. I’m seeing a lot of the ‘we’ll do it better’ approach, and some of the ‘we’ll also do it a bit differently’. This is fun for core users until it hits a saturation point and therefore a fatigue level. Then comes ’shake out’ time.

Starting from the target market pov, and specifically looking at things like competitors and barriers is an alternative approach. There are many millions of computer users who represent a desirable market for any number of things, yet who have not yet been compelled or convinced to fill their needs or desires electronically instead of the way they always have in the real world. Can this be done? Is it worth bothering with? Yes. Millions came here already because Amazon or eBay made it easy or attractive enough. Millions more are intrigued by some of the potential benefits, yet hesitate or stop because of barriers. What are those barriers and how to remove them is worth more careful attention, and not only from an ecommerce perspective. The goal of enriching society through open and connected knowledge bases should be equally targeted beyond core users.

There are many individuals and groups putting time and attention into important issues such as privacy, safety and ethics, and these collective efforts are very important. They’d be dramatically enhanced if every web citizen contributed more time and attention to them, but I also think that the single most effective contribution all web professionals can make in this regard happens to be the same place where major growth and opportunity resides which is in increasing the scope of what is here through increasing the user base.

As an example relating to safety, security and trust, many new sites and services devote significant attention to ensuring the security and safety of users, but how often does a potential user, not knowing any of this, hesitate and back out because they don’t feel safe and secure? Learning how to stay safe on the internet, if you aren’t a tech person, shouldn’t be anywhere near as hard as it is. This point is as relevant to our kids, who aren’t all going to be techies, as it is to 50 year olds. It’s actually more relevant to them, because it is the developers building for older business clients who are paying the most attention to issues such as trust and security.

I Hate The Computer.

I have heard this so many times. It’s interesting to what extent the word computer has come to include the web as well as the actual hardware. Even more interesting to me is what barriers are invoking this statement over and over.

This post is a summary of common characteristics of my personal conversations on the topic. An average profile of the people I’ve heard the I Hate The Computer statement from would include 40-60 years of age, completed post secondary education, and middle to upper income bracket. They include business people and professionals, as well as collectors and dealers of fine art and many other things. They are all computer users.

Since I know many people who fit this profile, even the most casual touching-base type contact with them in the past 4 years has included a mention of computers. The extent to which I hear some form of I Hate The Computer is really remarkable. Here are some of the most basic reasons. They relate to usability, privacy, safety, trust, and quality.

1. It makes me feel like an idiot.
• I’m a successful business person or professional or entrepreneur with university degree(s), a respected community profile, and financial independence. It galls me that this necessary ubiquitous box seems designed to confound anyone who doesn’t have the time or interest to be constantly learning more esoteric rules and jargon.
2. It is a diabolical tool.
• I am constantly surprised at how many experienced business people are oblivious to the nature of electronic communication. People who are highly sensitized to the necessity of discretion and confidentiality somehow don’t understand that most anything and everything typed on a computer is stored or cached somewhere, no matter how transitory or trivial it seems.
3. It is dangerous.
• I understand that any and every community has bad apples, but the anonymity factor over the internet scares me. In my community I can make informed judgments about people and environments for myself and my family. Wandering about via the computer seems the equivalent of heading into any environment in town partially if not totally blindfolded. This is clearly evidenced to me by the fact that in any public community I’ve seen, people use aliases and almost never reveal their real names.
4. It’s for kids.
• Most of what is on the internet appears to be a waste of my time. Perhaps if I spent the time searching past the general interest stuff that is geared to a young audience, I’d find things more suited to my taste, but if it takes all that time and learning then what’s the benefit that makes it better or easier than old fashioned ways in which I pursue personal hobbies and interests.
5. It is unreliable.
• Nobody can push the wrong button and make my paper records disappear by accident.
6. It is mostly a very basic tool and beyond that a toy.
• I understand the advantage of co-ordinating meetings and task force activities in a large organization via MS Office tools. I can see the convenience and scope of specific activities such as buying books on Amazon or looking up flight schedules. I know that friends with specialized or academic interests have memberships to and subscriptions from distant institutions which give them some access to library data. My own brief forays into searching for information or in personal areas of interests have only turned up a bewildering amount of what, to me, is no better than junk mail.
7. It’s hurting the economy
• I don’t really know how you could accurately calculate the number of man hours that paid employees waste on their computer, but I’m sure it’s massive. I also believe that the overall societal investment of resources into computers in recent years is vastly disproportionate to any potential return. Technology is lucrative and can also potentially offer and enhance social benefits, but the widespread focus on making computers more than an enhancement tool is incomprehensible to me.

I’d love to see and hear more examples and interpretations of barriers.

One more why Technorati? to add to the many. There’s the usual ‘why do updates take weeks’ and ‘why does emailing help’ typically get a response that says try us again in a week. A few weeks ago I actually got a response from help via email telling me that their embed code was buggy (not that this helped much).

My current why is about the my favorites functionality.

Of the 24 favorites I have listed in Technorati, 5 are supposedly non-existent, including a Gartner blog.

When I click on the top url I get the following message page:

“HUH?
There are blogs, and then there’s whatever you just typed in. If it’s a blog, we don’t know about it. Maybe you made a typo. Or maybe it’s a blog that doesn’t exist. Maybe you don’t exist. (In which case, please ignore this.)”

Now when I click on the secondary url in the listing it works perfectly well, and I can also access these through a bookmark or feedreader. This apparently applies to anyone’s favorites that have no Technorati links to them, including one of Robert Scoble’s 11 favorites (a Microsoft url).

So what is the point of the slightly insulting message?

I regularly forget to go to my Blog rather than Post tab and click on that second url. Some of my favorite feeds are in my Technorati favorites, but by no means all. Only a feedreader recognizes all my favorites.

sculpted and scattered and molded in time slots
her mandates define her like olives in gin

from bathroom to beeper so snugly connected
she struts like a punctual guardsman
unsoiled

as he watches the march from his favorite corner
…an almost disorganized bundle of tweed…
from the nook where his ashes sag safe in their pipe bowl
he watches this dervish of womanly will

did he marry this clock? this unending rehearsal?

his privacy cramps with inertia’s greed
as her hands reach reflexively, smoothly, artistically
to snare straying objects or children or whims
and arrange them
like flowers, like notes in a symphony
singing to sundry, to tourist, to neighbors

indulgent or needy? he wonders as ever
and shrugs to his corner, his teetotaling haven,
replete with aloofness, asperity, brine,
and his puzzlement.

Locked in their maze of unquestioned denial
and sceptical sniping, he keeps her at bay.

She no longer expects him to learn how to soar
through her fantasies…
…waltz with her will.

She retreats, reconnoiters, attends to her flowers,
unable to set him, her husband, in place.
Like a hangnail he pulls at her channeled desires
untorn and unmendable
snagging the silk
of her soul
while she clashes her vistas against his inductions
in habit
in marriage
in alien trust.

©1999 VJI

one father gone
just one

one of millions in a city
overcrowded by family units
countless fathers not yet gone
just one

countless heads of soft brown hair
countless warm brown smiling eyes
eyes which made the world revolve
pain dissolve

countless gentle ready hands
in countless lands

and pride and hope and eager dreams
and discipline and worry
and countless sleeping children blessed
by naked kisses
no one misses
one

just one

©1975 VJI