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Thursday Oct 19, 2006
Podcast listening makes me lonely
Podcasts, along with blogs, social networking, wikis and video sharing, are seen as key developments of the new, fancy Web 2.0 approach to the web.An ethos of all these services is one of user participation, a DIY system where users can easily become creators. Another binding factor is that of multiple niches; that no matter what you're interested in, you'll find content around that interest - and other people interested in it too (ala the Long Tail).
Now, I love podcasting. There's a bunch of audio shows that I download every week, copy on to my MP3 player and listen to on the bus on the way home from work. But I do have one big problem with it. Instead of being a connecting thing, where you meet others with mutual interests it instead feels like a totally solitary experience.
No one I know (in the real world) listens to the shows I do. Fragmentation and personalisation means that we all stick to our own interests and there's no chance for water cooler conversations.
Each week, I listen to s US tech show called This Week in Tech. Not even the techies in my office would listen to this as the angle of the show is more about the business of IT than IT itself. It is also Very, Very American, something many Brits can't acquire a taste for.
I also listen to a couple of podcasts from my home country New Zealand, and there aren't many people in London who would choose to do that. And I look out for NBA podcasts, particularly if they're talking about the Houston Rockets. Yup, that's niche listening and unsurprisngly, no one in my offline networks remotely cares about Yao Ming, Tracy McGrady and co.
But I'm missing the point, I hear you say. The internet also enables me to go online to talk about these shows and the issues they bring up. True, but I just don't get round to it. Podcast-capturing software means you don't even have to visit the sites where the communities are; the software just pulls the files down automatically so I have no reason to visit the online homes of This Week in Tech or bFM. And even when I have, you come across frightening reminders that user-gnerated content isn't always the most readable content. Also, just because me and a Texan 16 year old both follow the Rockets, it doesn't mean I want to be his friend. Which is probably a good thing, right?
I'm not necessarily pining for the old days of three TV channels and everyone listening to the chart show on Radio 1, but there's something great about sharing media experiences with colleagues and friends - something I'm not currently getting with podcasts. Posted by Dom Waghorn ( 3:17 PM ) Link to this post Comments[3]
TheSite.org Community redesign
If you haven't seen the redesigned Community section on TheSite.org (YouthNet's information and advice website for young people) yet, then take a look.
I've had no involvement in the project myself so feel (just about) neutral enough to say what a great job has been done. There's a massive amount of information to organise but it also needs to feel alive – much of the content, after all, is user-generated. I think the balance in this design is pretty much spot on.
It got me thinking about the impact of MySpace on web design, especially for young people. They've taken customisation to the point where usability suffers badly, but it doesn't seem to matter:
As Business Week has noted, MySpace has created design anarchy that works:
User pages on MySpace can look truly hideous (and many, many of them do), but the site's operators aren't trying to help users make their pages look better. If they were, they might offer some pre-built page design templates or color schemes, or even constrain the design choices users have.
Instead, the system allows users to do almost anything to the look of their pages, whether it's a good idea or not. Regardless of its aesthetic consequences, this customizability is one of the site's most attractive features, and the do-it-yourself sensibility of the site resonates with the audience's desire for self-expression.
It would be a foolish web designer that simply tried to mimic MySpace users' page designs, however. You can't fake the youth-look. On MySpace, as on TheSite.org's Community pages, the design works because the users really are in control.
Posted by Tom Green ( 11:15 AM ) Link to this post Comments[1]