Above all else… Simplicity!

Skrevet - Monday, July 17th, 2006 kl. 23:45 | Kategori - Kodning, Rants

I’m a simple man - and that reflects in how I like stuff. I’ve been a fan of Google’s from way back when it was a battle between Yahoo, Alta Vista and Google. But they are on their way to ruining the feel. I still remember their “Do no evil!”-motto. I think they are a victim to their own success. They got greedy along the way… and everyone knows power corrupts - they even made a 6 part movie about it…

Everyone has Google ads. AdWords are everywhere… even personal blogs use them to generate a profit to run their blog. I hate them. Plain and simple. Luckily, I don’t pay much attention - it is long ago, I became blind to the commercials in newspapers and magazines. The same has happened with internet ads. I no longer see them. I think the number of times, I’ve clicked on a Google ad can be counted on one hand - and all of those were mistaken random clicks (you know those spasm you get from time to time, where you knock over your glass of cola, try to save the chips and in the process click on everything on your desktop at the time).

I’ve even installed Mozilla Firefox and their brilliant Adblock extension to get rid of the most annoying ad-servers out there. I mean - if people annoy me with half-screens of rolling, blinking, noisy mayhem… they already lost me as a customer, so there is no sense in getting me angry too… Some will say: “You are free-loading!” - and to some extent I am. I do not support the site I’m looking at since they do not get to show me the ads. But… and I really do think there is a but in there somewhere… marketing people really need to come up with better integrated advertisements. It is really possible to integrate the commercials into the design so they are not a pain in the eye to look at.

In addition, I have zero tolerance when it comes to loading times and flashing stuff. A new webpage gets 3.4 seconds before I go someplace else. If they spend those seconds displaying ads and not content, I’m not there for the content - and I won’t return. The internet is luckily filled with no-nonsense people like me - there are tons of information out there, presented with me in mind. They have advertisements, but they generate a profit - and I’ll tell you the secret to their success:

They concentrate on design and content before how many ads they can stuff into a single html-page. I think a classic example is Ctrl-Alt-Delete. It’s my favorite internet cartoon and you can tell that he put a lot of energy into putting together a nice clean design. Also, updates are frequent and his blog is interesting. I believe he understands how to make a successfull site - make enough quality content for your readers to come back, and put advertisements that are relevant and, most importantly, far between to improve the value of these ads.

Sure - if you plaster your entire site, some are bound to click an ad - but they will leave with a disgruntled disposition, since they probably didn’t want to go there and more importantly, feel tricked into clicking it. It’s just like in the old days of Internet Exploder and sites with questionable content… before you knew it, your pc was madly trying to open up a myriad of pop-ups. These days, I’m getting pretty good at avoiding these sites (once burned and you smell bad forever and all that…).

I once went to New York and stood at Times Square where you see New Year’s celebrated every year. Oh… my… god… it’s true, you really do feel insignificant there. It’s so huge and you have the enormous bill-boards plastered everywhere. And you know what I did? I went away… I can honestly say, that is one place, I’ll never return to. I like warm, cozy places where the same people return day after day… and I feel the same way when surfing the net. I have a few select places, I keep returning to - and I’ll support those as much as I possibly can. So, you can take your blinking ads and put them where the sun never did - and probably never will - shine.