re: #231 ObserverArt

And there is the result of Twitter’s 140 characters. And it will go into their thick skulls that way for ever and ever.

I hate Twitter. It is doing no good the way it is being used.

Twitter is more limited, but it isn’t unique—the entire web is like that. Most people scan web pages, they don’t read them. From an earlier edition of a great book on web usability called Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug (it’s currently on it’s 3rd edition):

We don’t read pages. We scan them.

One of the very few well-documented facts about Web use is that people tend to spend very little time reading most Web pages. Instead, we scan (or skim) them, looking for words or phrases that catch our eye.

The exception, of course, is pages that contain documents like news stories, reports, or product descriptions. But even then, if the document is longer than a few paragraphs, we’re likely to print it out—since it’s easier and faster to read on paper than on a screen.

Why do we scan?

• We’re usually in a hurry. […]

• We know we don’t need to read everything. […]

• We’re good at it. […]

The net effect is a lot like Gary Larson’s classic Far Side cartoon about the difference between what we say to dogs and what they hear. In the cartoon, the dog (named Ginger) appears to be listening intently as her owner gives her a serious talking-to about staying out of the grabage. But from the dog’s point of view, all he’s saying is “blah blah GINGER blah blah blah blah GINGER blah blah blah.” […]

http://www.sensible.com/chapter.html

This is convenient where politics is concerned as we’ve all seen people post links when they clearly haven’t read the entire source article carefully. Ditto to seeing people respond to posted links after neglecting to do so.

I’m certain that’s why people like Greenwald write articles thousands of words long and bury things down in the middle or towards the end of them—they know you’ll be exhausted long before you reach the end.

After explaining at the beginning of the chapter that:

We’re thinking “great literature” (or at least “product brochure”), while the user’s reality is much closer to “billboard going by at 60 miles an hour.”

The author closes it with:

…if your audience is going to act like you’re designing billboards, then design great billboards.

Political operatives & other activists have learned to use Twitter—the ultimate virtual “billboard”—to maximum advantage.