Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Let’s Stop Speaking Like Machines and Start Speaking Like People
The path from engineering to marketing is usually not a straight line.
The path from engineering to marketing is usually not a straight line.
For some reason, this weekend has seen a lot of talk about what FriendFeed is/isn’t/should be doing (see Louis Gray and others). One person even predicted that we will fail. I considered writing my own list of complaints about FriendFeed. I think and care about it a lot more than most people, so my list of FriendFeed issues would be a lot longer. I may still do that, but there’s something else also worth discussing…
For more than a year after iPhone was available to the public, I held off on buying one. I made all these excuses–that my BlackBerry was “good enough,” that work was paying my monthly bills, that I was concerned about lackluster Exchange support, or switching to AT&T.
This is a section of the All Things Digital Web site featuring posts from around the Web, from other Dow Jones properties and also original pieces we solicit. The section is now explicitly labeled that it comes "from other Web sites."
We are fully aware of the controversies around how linking and aggregating is done on the Web and we, in no way, are attempting to "scrape" original content created by others. Instead, regarding third-party posts, we are trying to point readers of this site to other posts from around the Web that we admire and are trying to do so in the quickest manner possible.
The Internet is full of terrific content that is not ours and we want to help our readers find it by making editorial suggestions--Look, Mom, no algorithm!--of posts we think are worth their time.
That is why we have made even more changes to Voices to ensure we do this in the most transparent and timely way. While we don't expect that everyone will agree with our policies, we have made changes that reflect our intent in pointing to content outside our site.
So here is exactly what we do: Read more »
Because the site is wholly owned by Dow Jones, publisher of The Wall Street Journal, we aim to adhere to the journalistic standards of the best of the mainstream media. But, because it is run autonomously as a small online startup, we aim to exhibit the fresh thinking and nimbleness of the best of the new media. We want to be first, and sassy, but also well sourced and accurate. We will offer lots of opinion and analysis, but plenty of fact as well.