[thelist] flash detection

Mike Hardaker mike at angloinfo.com
Mon May 7 19:56:14 CDT 2001


> Bottom line: Compellingly conveying your client's message to
> their intended
> audience is the name of the game.

This is where I have to disagree, thanks to the user-controlled nature of
the medium (at the risk of sounding far too [J] Nielsonian). I think the
name of the game is *allowing* the intended audience to *discover* your
clients' messages. Deep down, I think the Web is a fairly poor medium for
*conveying* much, in that active sense that is implied by the term.

And that, in many ways, is its strength. We have great "push" media already.
We're accustomed to them, know how to make them work, and thus want (for
understandable reasons) to mould the Web in their image. I really do think,
however, that this is a mistake - and that the Web in its current form
provides us with a great opportunity to learn about (and, ultimately,
understand) "pull" media.

Please note the phrase "in its current form". I do believe also that things
may (and probably will) change. The usage patterns of the under-18s are very
different to those of the more mature people that currently dominate the
economically-active sector of Web users. Will the kids change as they grow
older, or will they change the Web?

It's going to be a bumpy ride :-)

> Rich approaches add to the "compelling"
> part, but this may or may not be suitable to the client, to the
> message, to
> the intended audience. Finding the best balance point for a given
> conversation is the key.

Couldn't agree more. And I personally believe that "rich" Flash (or its
replacement) will be more compelling to a later generation of surfers than
it is to today's mainstream. There's too much of it about at the moment
because, well, it's so much damn *fun* to do it, compared with hacking out,
say, yet more database code.

-------------------
Mike Hardaker
Founder & Publisher
AngloINFO
www.angloinfo.com (Web)
wap.angloinfo.com (WAP)






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