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Sep 07, 2003 3:34 pm		re: Website evolution...would appreciate comments
Chris Hubbard		Nic, Good questions. Here's my thoughts. >Point one Websites are about content (right?!) Absolutely not. This is the biggest myth of the internet. Web sites are about service. Web sites contain content, but the success of a web site is not measured in the volume or even quality of it's content. The success of a web site is measured in it's usefulness presenting or providing that content. If I've got a room full of books in Russian (I can't read Russian - unfortunately), then I've got a huge amount of content, yes? Content becomes valuable, useful, important when it's provided to a content consumer (either a person, or a 'bot like you suggest) who wants or needs that or similar content. and there's alot of websites out there that have great content but are often let down by poor UI's, navigation, lousy optimisation, poor marketing and therefore low awareness and a host of other issues. There is no direct connection between poor UI, navigation, lousy optimisation and low awareness. There's a direct connection between marketing (in all it's sundry forms) and awareness. You're right that a site with little to no marketing or the wrong marketing will have low awareness. A site that is poorly architected (which would allow for poor UI, navigation, etc) is likely to not be used, especially if there are competing sites that are better architected. The fundamental point I'm trying to make is that site owners and contributers ultimately need to just stick to what they know best...CONTENT...providing readers with relevance. Here I think you're closer. Especially with the last phrase. Providing readers with relevance is a service. The commodity that is being used is the content that is being presented or filtered by the web site owner. The value come in presenting that content in ways that are useable. Point two >More and more websites going live all day. All competing against each other. The result is the users (US) get bogged down - sure, we have our favourites but we're always tempted to try the latest site. I think we will move to a 'web-butler' approach - a bit like a virtual assistant. It's an intelligent browser that learns what we like, what we search for etc. Over time, this butler knows exactly the info we search for hourly/daily/weekly/on pay day...etc etc. The result is thus...we don't actual visit sites or search for them and websites from a presentational perspective don't exist. I certainly hope your vision of this future does not come to pass. I've tried a couple tools that do this, and they were all terrible. Thanks for your good, thought provoking questions/comments, Chris Private Reply to Chris Hubbard (new win)

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