A friend and colleague of mine runs a pretty good blog at http://fasterfuture.blogspot.com, which is a fairly good way of keeping up with a lot of internet news in one place… I’m even meant to be a contributor when i get the chance…
But his latest update shows increasing signs of a common sickness amongst new media commentators….the dreaded buzzwords…
In the past, web geeks and nerds used tech speak to communicate in a way which would show our superiority over the uneducated masses. Which was fine, until now, because we actually have to speak to normal people in everyday life, and now they’re looking to us to explain what they should be doing with their businesses…
So here, I pledge to avoid using any marketing or internet terms which have absolutely no point to them. FasterFuture uses a great term today ‘video snacking’. I’ve used a similar term in the past which is ‘short video clips’. Can you spot the difference?
Web 2.0 has already inspired several backlashes, because it just means that people are using the latest technology to bring people and content together… User Generated Content is one that is valid, because it’s a short term for a lot of things, but it isn’t the only answer to everything for the future, and shouldn’t be touted as such… It’s one answer to one set of problems…
For me, the best websites; google, pandora.com, linkedin.com etc have a simple premise, and increasingly websites are using simpler designs with more space. So why can’t new media commentators do the same?