Arc90 wants you to create better web content

Arc90‘s Richard Ziade and Tim Meaney gave a presentation at the 2010 SXSWi festival called Revenge of the Editorials, which was billed as a discussion about sifting through the massive amounts of content on the Web to have a meaningful experience. But what the experience company’s partners and lead strategists really offered was a call to action aimed at Web content producers to step up the quality of the content. Advertisers and entertainment companies hoping to take full advantage of the Web to promote their wares may find Ziade and Meaney’s advice useful.

photo by Damon Webster

Meaney opened the session with an extremely brief history of publishing with regard to ease of production and ease of distribution. The history lesson had the usual highlights: monks transcribing religious documents, the Guttenberg press, television and radio, and finally the Internet. The argument is that while the ease of production and distribution increased from the printing press through the late 1800s, radio (followed by television) saw an acceleration in ease of distribution, but a decline in ease of production.

Then there was the Internet

The early days of the Internet was still hampered by limitations of distribution and production. But by the time blogs hit mainstream, producing and distributing content over the Web became “a frictionless process,” which, according to Ziade and Meaney, was both a boon and bother.
With so many people contributing to the online discussion, the nature of content has changed in a few fundamental ways. First, content is more compact. Meaney said that according to one study, the ideal YouTube video is 1:40 minutes long. That is a far cry from other video content, say an average story on 60 Minutes, than traditional media outlets.

Content has also become very brief. Meaney pointed to Twitter as the obvious example: one statement at 140 characters. But in addition to content coming in smaller chunks, there is more of it. Anyone with access to a computer and the Internet can blog, tweet, update a Facebook page, etc. Though Meaney did not have statistics to back up his assertion that these people were indeed publishing content, there is little denying that it seems that we have reached critical mass with the amount of content available. What makes an advertising campaign, for example, such as Microsoft’s Bing spots so successful is that they were able to tap into that overwhelming sense of information overload.

Repercussions

So what went wrong with Web content? Meaney argues that Web content producers, as well as we, as consumers, have lost something: craftsmanship. Meaney referred to a session earlier in the day when the presenter asked, “Where are the masterpieces of the Web?” Blogs, streaming content and other fast-food-esque platforms seem to have sacrificed the quality of what they are producing in favor of jumping in the “gluttony” (Meaney’s word) that easy access to content production affords.

What has been lost is a sense of composition. Quality has been hindered by mass production techniques, activity streaming and the consumer impulse to gorge on access to content. We used to look forward to the evening paper, our favorite television show, or a really funny commercial. But Meaney sees a consumer that stares at a screen as the feeds scroll on the screen, and maybe a little drool at the corner of their mouths.

There is hope for Web content

Unfortunately, the second half of the presentation was cut short due to an emergency (someone apparently pulled a fire alarm, which caused an evacuation), so Richard Ziade did not have as much time to elaborate on his ideas.

Ziade spoke about how some people are actually curating content and bringing some of the best that the Web has to offer on their particular topics. For example, Ziade pointed to Rock, Paper Shotgun, a site about gaming, as an example of a site that curates the best gaming articles. In fact, during the questions segment, one audience member identified herself as a Web curator. Her site, My Inspiration Lounge, is a site for women that curates the best content about finding inspiration.

Others are helping to make Web content better in other ways. For example, the Web design resource A List Apart may not Tweet a dozen times a day, or even publish more tha a few times a month, but the content is thought-out and well-designed.

What does this mean for advertisers?

Ziade identified three takeaways that all businesses that produce content on the Web should examine. First, reclaim craftsmanship. Many successful ad campaigns that take to the Web are usually of high quality or at least engaging as entertainment. Repo Men, for example, is a new sci-fi movie that is marketed with a Website that engages the audience with elements from the movie’s plot.

Content is really about people. Ziade advocated looking for was to reconcile the Web so that people can create quality connections. You don’t build trusted communities around content. Rather, you build trusted communities around people.

Lastly, we have the tools to create better content now. New platforms, such as the iPad, Kindle and other sophisticated e-readers try to mimic the tactile experience of traditional print media by allowing users to “grope and paw” their way through content. According to Ziade and Meaney, you can quality design and quality content without bowing to a proprietary platform. Arc90 practices what they preach. Their free Readability application reformats poorly composed websites in hope of improving their user Web experience.

A call to action

The end of the session brought up the inevitable question about how to pay for quality content when the Web generates little revenue compared to television and print. Does the same argument apply to advertisers as media companies? I think so. As previously mentioned, many advertisers do a very good job producing Web content, but for all the great stuff being published, there is an overwhelming mass of assembly-line and forgettable work. And it is up to the people doing the work to, in fact, do the work that people want. Because choosing quantity over quantity will eventually push consumers away.