May 29, 2000 New Thinking:
What do you want?
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May 29, 2000
What do you want?
By Gerry McGovern
Sometimes I know what I want. Sometimes I think I know what I want. Sometimes I really don’t know what I want.
I used to think that personalization was a great idea. I used to personalize websites. Then, I just stopped. And in the back of my head this nagging negative feeling towards personalization took root. But I was wary about raising issues about personalization because of the power it had as an idea.
The accepted wisdom was that anyone who knew anything about the Internet would be for personalization. It was such an obvious progression on from that old industrial age concept of mass production, whether that be of cars or news. Yes, there is an inescapable logic there, but take that logic too far and you reach a hollow individualism where we only learn from what we already know.
How do we learn new things if we have personalized our world? How do we acquire judgment and critical skills if we only see what we want to see? How do we acquire the essential social skill of understanding another’s point of view, if all we do is surround ourselves with those who think like us?
Northern Ireland is an example of personalization. Unionists surrounded themselves with their points of view and Nationalists surrounded themselves with theirs. The recent historic breakthroughs which have opened up the opportunity for peace and a better society were built around the hard won belief that the other point of view had merit and needed to be understood.
The Poynter Internet study which I wrote about last week had a very interesting finding with regard to personalization. It found that a great many of the people in its study group had stopped personalizing the Web. The study stated that, “They had often tried customized news, but given that up "because I might miss something I ought to know about."”
If you were Nike would you offer to your customers the ability to personalize the Nike ‘swirl’ logo? I doubt it very much. You might allow them some limited ability to design their own sneaker, but really you would be failing your customer if you gave them a white sheet to do anything they wanted.
You see, teenagers, and many of us adults, want to own many of the exact same things as others own. Despite all the hype, it is generally not cool to be too different. Much of the conversation in the canteen is about the TV show we all watched. I know people who watch shows they don’t even like so as not to be left out!
Those who base their business plans on the belief that 500 channels are what we all desperately want, fundamentally misunderstand the social nature of people. For all its vast choice, the Internet has become a conservative place where the vast majority of people visit a small number of websites.
It’s important to remember that the websites we build are in themselves a work of personalization. If we allow the visitor too much scope to personalize we may in fact confuse them, destroying our unique offer to them, leaving neither party satisfied.
Gerry McGovern
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It’s important to remember that the websites we build are in themselves a work of personalization.
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