What the broadband meltdown tells us: December 10, 2001 issue of New Thinking

December 10, 2001 New Thinking:
What the broadband meltdown tells us

Website content management

Home I About I Services I Clients I Contact

New Thinking Home

Subject Classification
Reader Feedback
Subscribing
Unsubscribing
2006
2005
2004
2003
2002
2001
2000
1999
1998
1997
1996

Books by
Gerry McGovern

Content Critical

Gaining competitive advantage through high-quality web content

The Web Content
Style Guide

The essential guide
for online writers, editors and managers

December 10, 2001

What the broadband meltdown tells us

By Gerry McGovern

The collapse of Excite@Home and so many other broadband companies spells out a very simple truth: There is currently not a sufficient number of consumers willing to pay for broadband to create a viable marketplace.

Broadband is great in theory but woeful in practice. It has received extraordinary evangelism and hype over the last ten years. Those promoting broadband have talked glowingly of everything from virtual reality, to video-on-demand, to interactive games, to businesses zipping megabytes of data in seconds.

What the broadband industry and its promoters have signally failed to recognize is the cost of providing such broadband access and the actual demand. The basic reality is that it is currently too expensive to provide broadband. Broadband gives you a Rolls Royce Internet. The vast majority of us cannot afford that.

From the broadband fiasco we can learn some very important lessons. The first lesson is that fast is rarely cheaper and fast isn't always better. For much of the Nineties the technology industry, and the media that fed off it, behaved like they were taking vast quantities of heavy-duty, mind-expanding drugs. Everything was about speed. As we see today, when fast companies like Excite@home and Enron crash, they crash spectacularly.

The need for speed and change became an almost religious mantra among many technology pundits. Broadband was the only thing that mattered. In fact, many pushed to design broadband-friendly websites because they fervently believed that broadband was just around that corner.

The second lesson is to believe it when you see it. The Web needs to be treated for what it is, not for what technologists and graphic designers feel it should be. The broadband mentality simply cannot accept that this revolutionary Web is in fact a boring old library; only a very, very big boring old library.

The broadband mentality skims across the surface of the Web, trying to make it all shiny, fancy and hip. This has led to the development of millions of websites that suck. These websites try so hard to be glossy magazines, to be spectacular TV ads. They have failed miserably.

Study after study shows that people who use the Web from every continent on this planet don't want flashy websites. They want functional websites, with pages that download quickly. They want websites that have comprehensive information that is well organized. They want effective search engines. They want quality support. They want purchase processes that are simple and robust.

All these things - all the things that people really want from the Web - do not require broadband. Those who have chased the broadband rainbow have failed to recognize the riches that can be gotten from simply laid out, well organized websites.

These people belong to the Macromedia Flash generation. According to Merriam Webster dictionary, flash is about creating a "vulgar ostentatious display." The Web is a digital library. Website design needs to be taken away from flashy graphic designers, and marketers and advertising executives who think in TV and glossy magazine images.

A website that works needs people with librarian skills (information architects) who know how to organize content. It needs editors who can deliver the right content. It needs people who can write for the Web.

Website design is about comprehensive content, great organization (metadata, classification, navigation, search), simple, clear, readable layout. And you don't need broadband for any of this.

Gerry McGovern

Next issue: Information architecture versus graphic design
Previous issue: A day in the life of an information worker
New Thinking homepage

New Thinking Newsletter
Subscribe to this free weekly newsletter covering the role and function of content on the Web.
More info | Privacy policy
Read the current issue

Email Address:

 Subscribe  Unsubscribe

Content management seminar feedback
"Gerry's presentation was very well received by the more than 400 higher education delegates. I've chaired this meeting since 1994 and very few speakers have generated the same level of enthusiasm. Wit and wisdom is always an unbeatable combination."
Bob Johnson, American Marketing Association

“Excellent presenter ... thought-provoking and relevant. I hope we can persuade him to visit us again one day.”
Malcolm Davison
The British Association of Communicators in Business

"Hearing Gerry McGovern speaking, one can feel that he truly masters the subject of content management. He was voted ‘best speaker of the conference’ by delegates."
Toon Lowette
European Association of Directory Publishers

Find out more about Gerry McGovern's seminars

Website design is about comprehensive content, great organization (metadata, classification, navigation, search), simple, clear, readable layout. And you don't need broadband for any of this.

Review of The Web Content Style Guide

"This comprehensive and authoritative overview of content management starts with useful guidelines to writing and designing web material. If only most webmasters would heed the sound advice given here, then web surfing would be a much happier experience for us all!"
More

Malcolm Davison
Managing Director, writingfortheweb.co.uk

More reader feedback