[thelist] Newsletter as HTML Email

Hassan Schroeder hassan.schroeder at gmail.com
Wed Jan 31 12:42:20 CST 2007


On 1/31/07, Barney Carroll <barney at textmatters.com> wrote:

> If it ain't fix, huh? But the future /is/ pretty bright Hassan... Forget
> your subscribers! They're only holding you back! Hehehe.
>
> Seriously though, they could have it better.

So you claim -- I'm waiting to be convinced.

You're asking people to add a new and totally unfamiliar behavior to
one they're already comfortable with -- reading mail.

So, in the absence of an offered example, I picked out the air a fairly
mainstream figure who I knew has a blog: Arianna Huffington. So let's
go to her blog and follow our naive user (Windows XP/IE7):

OK, here's a button labeled RSS. Click. Hmmm. Here's a whole page
full of choices. OK, this one says "The Blog" -- but next to that there's
"Feed" and an icon for "My Yahoo" -- what the hey? I don't use Yahoo.

Well, whatever a "Feed" is, I guess I'll click that. Another page. Wow,
blah blah blah, OK, well, here's something that says "subscribe to
this feed". Oops, here's a popup from IE "Subscribe to this Feed"
mmmm. you subscribe ot a feed it is automatically added to the
Favorites Center and kept up to date." OK, not sure what the "Favorites
Center" is, but OK, I'll click subscribe. Another page. blah blah whatever.
So I guess that worked.

OK, let me go to my favorites and see -- mmm. Nothing about Feeds
there. Oh, well. That was fun -- not. Guess I'll go check my email.

:::::::::

So tell me again, exactly how this is "simplifying" life for this user? :-)

-- 
Hassan Schroeder ------------------------ hassan.schroeder at gmail.com



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