Adweek ventures into cultural history. And – in my opinion – they actually do succeed.
Category: media
A great illustration of how the user experience of getting your movie going is quiet different depending on if you have paid for it – or not.
I agree with everything he writes. I frequently do. Here he makes his case very clear.
For his profession to be interested in human perception and its inner workings makes allot of sense.
“Strange Maps” is a wonderful read for me. It shows that on the Internet even strange or obscure content will find an audience.
In the recent post pages from Life Magazine in the forties are the subject. I find them highly entertaining. What Life wrote is utter rubbish. Complete fiction. As probable as you having 5 legs.
In 1942 many people in the US took those maps for a likely scenario. What an amount of wasted fear. I personally don’t like to jump to the conclusion that such non sense got produced to manipulate people into a certain direction. For me it is more likely to see the motivation in the fabrication of fictional war global war maps in that Life hoped to increase the circulation.
I think that today’s articles and ‘news items’ often don’t do much better in the area of plausibility. How is that swine flu pandemic going?
Seed Magazine writes about a study that links less readable fonts to better ability to recall the conten. A less readable font slows down reading. Makes sense.
However, in those studies the subjects had no choice but to read the poorly typeset text. In reality most reading happens in a context, where other texts -presumably easier to read- are just a glimpse away. A study that would take this into account would probably have devastating results for badly readable fonts: You can not remember what you didn’t read in the first place.
It’s a little bit like, is the Albanian army going to take over the world?
I don’t think so.
Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes about the future of Netflx according to The Hollywood Reporter
Netflix streaming right now feels indeed like the early Napster: All this content for that kind of price? Amazing. As long the Starz deal runs Netflix will gain momentum.
They will be installed on lots of screens & devices. Maybe they will be able to pay more for content than all the other balkanized wanna be streamers together.
We will see. And watch. And it will be interesting.
Thanks Mike for tweeting about the website of Douglas Trumbull. Nice to see this being done so well. Great content with great presentation. Can happen on the Internet. There are not many examples of a site like this though.
This page compares the user experience of a legit DVD with that of a pirated movie. I would add to this to get the packaging open: There are often the shrink wrap + 3 ugly white stickers on each open side saying “Security Device enclosed”.
I remember that early DVDs would start into the movie right away. and then, when done would go to the menu. When you insert a DVD you do it, since you want to see the movie. Not because you want to watch all the other crud, like a menu opening that contains key elements of the movie to come, often oddly animated.
The problem with this is, that probably not enough people care. They don’t care about spam, viruses on their computer, their diet either. In turn the quality of the offerings for ‘the general public’ get worse. To the point that they are plain junk in some cases. I read that ’30 rock’ would be a good show. When I watched some of the first season the other day I was a bit shocked how little I was able to enjoy it. Probably a unique aversion since I don’t watch TV. So my tolerance for mental junk might be a bit different compared to people who spend hours in front of the TV screen.
And -as so often- he has a point.
Dennis Baron’s book “A Better Pencil” does not only has a nice title, but going by this Salon Interview it seems to well worth the read.
I tend to disagree with him when he proclaims:
And the funny thing is that you could put anything out there, and somebody is going to read it.
I think there is an awful lot of things that get written today and that will never be read. And not only on Twitter. We tend to apply the existing rules, concepts and understandings for way to long. Cars looked as if you were to put a horse in front of them for way to long. In the past if something got written then it indeed got read. Varying audience. But since publication cost was significant filters on many levels made sure that it was recoverable.
Now publication cost is zero. Yet, we still assume that we publish it and they will view it. This does no longer apply, since their is simply not enough readership to go around.
The corpus of unread things we cared to write is not a bad thing in itself. If we were aware then it would regulate itself.
The error of an assumed audience becomes expensive when you pour resources into something that will never find an audience that justifies the efforts that went into it. That video that you crafted so nicely for your company was not worth it when only a couple hundred people will ever watch it. Company websites cost sometimes 5 dollars or more per visitor. A visitor that most of the time will have forgotten about it after 2 seconds.