navin, Author at Navin Kabra's Blog

Why do website publishers alienate users with so much clutter?

My friend @HarshadOak recently complained on twitter:

Think content websites need 2 look at delivering only the content that’s been explicitly requested by the user & nothing else

He was, like most of us, unhappy with all the clutter that you find on a typical website these days. There are ads, links to other posts, links to other websites, and a whole bunch of things other than the content that the user requested. The question is, if all the users hate this so much, why are the websites doing this? Don’t they know that they’re alienating their own users/fans?

The answer is simple: most of the users don’t care about this issue as much as they think they do.

I’ll explain.

I learnt this lesson the hard way in the early days of @meetumeetu‘s website wogma. Having views similar to Harshad, I kept pressing for a clean website with minimal advertising. And as meetu asked for advice from experienced folks, the advice she kept getting was that the ads needed to be more prominent. And when we (meetu and I both) pointed out that this would alienate the loyal readers, we got this surprising advice:

If putting more prominent ads really alienates readers, then, as soon as you enable these ads on the website, your traffic should see dip. So, turn on the ads, see if there is a dip, and if there is one, then you can turn off the ads.

This seemed like a reasonable, scientific mechanism of testing the issue one way or the other, and we turned on ads.

And by now, you’ll have guessed what happened. There was no difference in the traffic.

The basic truth is this:

If you have good quality content, then the readers are willing to put up with all the clutter on the website. That is the price they pay for the free content.

But, Harshad points out:

even apart from ads, there tends to be so much content that the user hasn’t requested for

That’s simply because the web publisher wants you to stay on the site for longer. Hence you’ll see links to related posts, and other more interesting sections of the website. The game is to try to increase your page views per visit, since in most cases page view are directly proportional to ad revenue.

But what about this objection:

a clean site with revenues coming from other sources like events, paid content, etc. sounds doable

Yes, and no. I’ll respond to each separately:

Paid Content: In some ways, this is worse than ads and other clutter. It dilutes the brand and the content, and it irritates the readers even more than clutter. Increasing the ads and clutter rarely results in irate emails from users, but often content by guest bloggers does (and I am not even talking about paid content here).
Events: Is possible in cases of “local” sites, but not possible where the readership is global and the per-city density of readers is not high enough.
Etc: In general, trying to do any of the other things will distract from the main goal of most publishers – that of creating great content. This is not a tradeoff that everybody is willing to make.

So clutter is here to stay.

Are mobile sites a solution for this? This discussion started off with this tweet by Harshad:

That people r increasingly pointing to m.__ version of articles is IMHO a vote for clean interfaces & against the current web clutter

Make no mistake – as people start using the m.xxx sites more and more, publishers will find a way put ads and clutter there to. It just hasn’t become a big problem yet.

Here is a final quote to close out this article:

If you’re consuming something, and you are not paying for it, then you are the product…

In the world of (free) websites, the advertisers are the customers, you (the readers) are the product being sold, and the actual content is the marketing.

If Kapil Sibal is Such an Idiot, How Come You’re not the Prime Minister?

It is so common to hear people going on and on and on about how somebody famous and/or powerful is a complete idiot for doing something. They don’t understand how someone can be so totally bone-headed.

If you find yourself ever thinking like this (and I think this happens to all of us once in a while), stop and consider this question:

If that guy is such an idiot, and you can clearly see his faults, how come you are poor and unknown and that person is rich and famous?

In other words, the people who are in charge did not get there by being idiots, so if they are doing something that seems idiotic to you, which is more likely: that they are being idiots, or that you don’t have all the data, you are not seeing all the angles that they can see, and hence you are making mistaken assumptions based on an incomplete understanding of the situation?

Take, for example, the case of Kapil Sibal asking Google, Facebook, and co. to actively screen and filter all content before it is uploaded on their sites. Yes, on the face of it, it does seem rather an idiotic thing to say. However, my dear reader, I am willing to bet that Kapil Sibal is much smarter than you and me combined. He is a lawyer, he was the Solicitor-General of India, he had cleared the IAS exam (which is ridiculously difficult), and he has beaten Kyuki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi in an election. So the best you and I can say is that we don’t really understand why Kapil Sibal is making such statements. There could be any number of reasons that you’ll never know. Maybe this is a move designed to win over rural voters. Maybe this is just a public stunt to soften up Google, Facebook for a backroom deal later on at terms very favorable to the Congress party. Maybe this is a way to make sure that Google, Facebook are very co-operative and pliable when police (or other government bodies) approach them with requests for private data. Maybe he is the unlucky one who got picked by Sonia to make ridiculous statements to divert media attention away from the FDI issue. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.

Specifically, if you don’t understand Kapil Sibal’s motivations, you can’t really call him stupid.

Update 1: Do I agree with Kapil Sibal? Of course not. Pre-screen is neither possible, nor desirable. But I’m willing to bet that Kapil Sibal already knew both those things. My point is, saying we should oppose this is not the same as saying Kapil Sibal is an idiot

Update 2: Some people are interpreting my argument as “If you are not rich or famous, you shouldn’t air your opinion.” I’m definitely not saying that. All I am saying is that if your opinion is predicated on the fact that someone rich/famous is an idiot, then you really haven’t understood the situation, and should probably spend some more time thinking about the situation. Feel free to express your opinion, and disagree. Feel free to even call that person an idiot. But if you actually think that person is an idiot, you are deluded.

Update 3: This article is not really about Kapil Sibal. The issue is broader. There are lots of people who keep saying/thinking that CEOs/VPs of large companies are idiots, or top actors/actresses are idiots, and talentless. SibalGate was a lucky coincidence which gave me a very current example to hang my argument on, but my argument is more general.

For example, consider all those who think Rakhi Sawant is a talentless idiot. Really?! Her job is to be in the news, be controversial, and keep getting paid to appear on TV and in movies. And she is doing her job far better than most of us are doing our own jobs. How then is she a talentless idiot? She is very smart, and does have lots of talent (in PR and marketing) – just not the talent you were looking for (acting). (By the way, I stole this argument from Scott Adams.)

What I’m talking about can more generally be stated as: “If everyone else is such an idiot, how come you’re not rich?”. This is a also known as the “Fallacy of Chesterton’s Fence.”.

This argument was long ago presented by G.K. Chesterton as follows:

In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.”

This paradox rests on the most elementary common sense. The gate or fence did not grow there. It was not set up by somnambulists who built it in their sleep. It is highly improbable that it was put there by escaped lunatics who were for some reason loose in the street. Some person had some reason for thinking it would be a good thing for somebody. And until we know what the reason was, we really cannot judge whether the reason was reasonable. It is extremely probable that we have overlooked some whole aspect of the question, if something set up by human beings like ourselves seems to be entirely meaningless and mysterious. There are reformers who get over this difficulty by assuming that all their fathers were fools; but if that be so, we can only say that folly appears to be a hereditary disease. But the truth is that nobody has any business to destroy a social institution until he has really seen it as an historical institution. If he knows how it arose, and what purposes it was supposed to serve, he may really be able to say that they were bad purposes, that they have since become bad purposes, or that they are purposes which are no longer served. But if he simply stares at the thing as a senseless monstrosity that has somehow sprung up in his path, it is he and not the traditionalist who is suffering from an illusion.

So next time you think the world is being run by idiots, stop and think a little more…

Why teenagers rebel, act stupid, and why this is a good thing

Teenagers, as a rule, are rebellious, don’t listen to their parents, do stupid, reckless, dangerous things, and are generally a huge pain for parents to deal with. An article in the National Geographic (subscription required, unauthorized PDF here), based on recent research into brain functioning, explains why all of this happens, and more importantly, explains why this is actually good for the teenager (as long as one of the reckless things does not kill him/her).

The article (PDF) is long, and parts are rather boring, but some parts, especially on the second page, are quite insightful.

I’ll summarize with very broad, simplistic strokes:

Yes, teenagers do take more dangerous risks than most other age groups
They do understand the dangers involved (so you telling them “Don’t you know what could happen?” is not particularly useful)
The main difference between teenagers and others is that they value the rewards (gained from taking the risks) much more than adults
Teenagers take more risks in the company of their friends/peers. In other words, they value “social rewards” and “peer recognition” quite a lot – much more so than adults
In general, this is evolution’s way of encouraging teenagers to learn new things, explore new opportunities, to boldly go where they haven’t gone before. This prepares them for leaving their parents’ home and going out into the world on their own
They prefer the company of young people. Parents, teenagers don’t what you as friends, they want their friends as friends. (As explained previously, they are wired to get excited about new and unknown things, and parents are neither new, nor unknown, nor exciting.) Evolutionarily speaking, this is the teenagers investing in their future rather than their past or present
To help, parents should “engage and guide their teens with a light but steady hand, staying connected but allowing independence.” While the teenagers should obviously benefit from your experience (and they often do – but a little later than you would like), their primary instinct is to learn from their own mistakes. Let them.

I am not the parent of a teenager, so I have no idea what I’m talking about. But I’m good at summarizing long articles into pithy blog posts.

You should probably read the full article.