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Seth Godin, my guru of social analysis and social web analysis has a great post this morning about Driveby Culture and our waning attention spans. The fight for brand attention on the TV, on the web and in print has become staggeringly competitive of late, a mix of niche communities and large-scale flash promotions, all targeted to increase a fanbase, engage a demographic or increase brand awareness. A glorified net thrown from an airplane as he sees it. Seth brings the old fight between quantity and quality back to the floor, citing the “demise of thoughtful inquiry and deep experience,” and begging marketers to forget the masses that will race on, unchanged by shallow attempts to engage. Check it out.

Driveby culture and the endless search for wow

The net has spawned two new ways to create and consume culture.

The first is the wide-open door for amateurs to create. This is blogging and online art, wikipedia and the maker movement. These guys get a lot of press, and deservedly so, because they’re changing everything.

The second, though, is distracting and ultimately a waste. We’re creating a culture of clickers, stumblers and jaded spectators who decide in the space of a moment whether to watch and participate (or not).

Imagine if people went to the theatre or the movies and stood up and walked out after the first six seconds. Imagine if people went to the senior prom and bailed on their date three seconds after the car pulled away from the curb.

The majority of people who sign up for a new online service rarely or never use it. The majority of YouTube videos are watched for just a few seconds. Chatroulette institutionalizes the glance and click mentality. I’m guessing that more than half the people who started reading this post never finished it.

This is all easy to measure. And it drives people with something to accomplish crazy, because they want visits to go up, clicks to go up, eyeballs to go up.

Should I write blog posts that increase my traffic or that help change the way (a few) people think? Continue Reading →