George Carlin passed away yesterday and, in honor of him I’m posting a list of 7 things you can’t say on the Internet. Standard “this post does not reflect product direction or the views of my employer” disclaimers apply. 🙂
- Content Production is NOT for everyone. Not all of your customers need a blog or want to produce a video about your product… even if they love you! And if you are thinking about starting a podcast then please stop, turn around, and get educated on broadcasting 1st. Just because something has a low barrier to entry doesn’t mean you need to do it without training. Broadcasting is best when done by people that know what they are doing and training doesn’t mean “just do it”… Nike was wrong. I’m not saying you can’t do it, but simply that you have no right to complain if you can’t get your show into iTunes or the front page of Digg. Robert Scoble is NOT an A-List blogger that “made it”… he’s a professional journalist that knows how to interview and write good stories. The 90-9-1 % rule is there for a reason and isn’t going anywhere.
- Distractions DO NOT make you smarter. I’m not saying that the digital water cooler that is Twitter doesn’t have an important place in your life, but unless you are a journalist (see item #1), Twitter does not make you smarter. “Micro-content” could also stand for “micro-intelligence” and isn’t a substitute for real conversations, real books, real education, or simply sitting down and doing whatever it is you are being paid to do… which (in most cases) is not Twitter every time you come up with some pithy thought.
- The i[Phone/Pod/Mac] isn’t as good as I’d hoped. Saying anything like this still results in a religious following telling you why it’s a good thing the first iPhone didn’t have 3G or why iPods don’t need video. As a bonus to this I’ll add that Apple would prefer you “NOT talk about fight club” in general as evidenced by their consistent persecution of their biggest fan sites. I’m not sure when they won’t be able to get away with that anymore.
- E-mail is Required. “We need to kill e-mail” or “e-mail is dead” is a meme that makes it’s way around the Internet every couple of months. I’m here to tell you that e-mail is NOT dead and that, in fact, your super cool Web 2.5 social whatever NEEDS killer e-mail integration. E-mail is still the most widely used communication vehicle and will continue to be so for a LONG time. E-mail isn’t going away, but how we use it might evolve. 🙂
- Google Sucks. They haven’t improved the core search in years and gmail is really the best (albeit non-profitable) thing they’ve shipped outside of core search and their advertising business. Google docs is cute, but feels a lot more like a set of demo applications that give you a hint of what could be when it comes to online document sharing. You run out of real runway in these apps fast when it comes to usefulness. Real document authors are going to be using word for a long time and google presentation is TERRIBLE compared to Powerpoint at allowing you to push your message.
- Internet Advertising Sucks. No one has really figured this out and the industry is still VERY young. Ads in online videos suck and if YouTube can’t figure out how to make money then all video sites are in trouble until this gets solved. Standard ads aren’t any better. The targeting is generally terrible & even Facebook can’t make much with all the information they have about you as a person. These problems won’t be solved until ad agencies catch on and realize that not only do you need 30 instead of 1 message, but that you need 10,000 messages about your product or more. Maybe the problem isn’t figuring out what people want to hear about, but that there simply isn’t a message written for all those ears in waiting.
- Social Software Sucks. The top apps in facebook are the same f’ng quizzes that everyone sent in e-mail 10-15 years ago! I can’t port friend lists. I can’t take my data with me. Nothing is really mine. I have to sign into and manage 30 different profiles. No one helps me figure out where to focus my attention and most software doesn’t help me get my job done any faster… and my job is in Social Software! The problem is a combination of the fact that the industry is so young that no one has really figured out how to properly integrate these platforms and tools into your lives. Outlook was around a long time before “Getting things Done” came out and told you how to properly use it and the same curve is going to happen with Social Software as it evolves. This is what makes my job so exciting.
It’s possible that this post was over the top and I am certainly taking things a bit far, but I believe that’s what George did best. He made us all look at standards in a different way and did it by making us laugh and reflect on our own behaviors.
Feel free to write your own list if you’d like, but I’m not going to go around tagging people to do it. George wouldn’t have approved of such things.