Subject: Re: Stats From: loundy@earthlink.net (Mark Loundy) Date: Fri, 6 Sep 1996 17:40:12 -0800

Joe Shea [excerpted]:
> Does anyone know of another daily e-mail
>publication that eschews links in general and also requires scrolling. You
>may know that a paper that requires scrolling will therefore require a
>reader to spend a far longer time with it.
>
>        For advertisers, that is an enormous plus, especially when most
>hyper-linked sites create so many slam-bam-thank you-jam readers.  Who
>ever heard of a newspaper purchased at a newsstand whose readers spend
>25-40 seconds before going on to the next.
>
>        Browsing really is closer to what one does at a full-service
>newsstand where you go through dozens of magazine and paperback books and
>newspapers; scrolling requires the kind of commitment that comes after a
>purchase.  Do I have your permission to say that, Eric?

Joe,

The AR's strong point is its reporting. The presenter's primary task is to
get the heck out of the way of the user. Sometimes that requires a lot of
work.

Format can't force people to be "committed" or motivated. You can only
respond to existing motivation. Your readers are already motivated, for
their own reasons, to read the material in AR. The only thing that a
primitive interface does is inconvenience them needlessly. Why force your
customers to scroll past information that they do not want to get to the
things that they do? That's holdover thinking from the bad old days.

My impression, from your numerous postings, is that you personally eschew
sophisticated interfaces in the belief that plain, unlinked, text is
somehow inherently more valuable.

I don't see any value in telling the people who have purchased my product
that they then have to endure a linear interface when there are so many
superior ways of presenting content.

Mark Loundy
Cyberspace Consulting                http://home.earthlink.net/~loundy/
- -----------------------------------------------------------------------
Telecommunications Chair, NPPA             http://sunsite.unc.edu/nppa/
               ------------------------------------------
                    loundy@earthlink.net (preferred)
 70501.763@compuserve.com  +  Loundy@aol.com  +  loundy@plink.geis.com


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