It won’t be the first time I’ve failed with an idea. Won’t be the last. In fact, most of my ideas don’t work, and that’s what makes the successes so satisfying. Then again, I have a lot of ideas (not good ones, mind you).
So, given all the hype about social networking, I decided to install the ability to communicate with me, and among visitors on a number of my static webpage sites. It wasn’t difficult, and I expected a whole lot more than I got. Here’s what I did get.
I got about ten “posts”. One was related to the page topic (each page has a discussion area). Nine were kids (or adults) posting obscenities). That’s it. How many visitors to the pages? Let’s say about 100,000 over several months. People that is. Needless to say, I’m removing the facility from pages over the next while.
But What Does It Mean?
I know what it could mean, and I know what it probably means.
It could mean that:
- I didn’t know what I was doing on the technical side.
- Including the ability for users to add their messages and interact, when it’s added to long standing content based static pages doesn’t work.
- I didn’t do enough “community building” by trying to generate interest in interacting.
The first isn’t the case. The second might be. The third, while true, wouldn’t have mattered.
But, what is the likely reason for the failure?
I believe, based on previous experience with other interactive options (and let me say that there is almost nothing new in the current social media craze), that the majority of people are NOT interested in interacting on websites. Yes. The majority. They may use Facebook or Twitter for that, but when they visit web pages that’s not what they want. I’m betting that’s the answer.
Other answers are possible. It may also be a function of the particular kinds of visitors that come to our sites, particularly via search engines. We have had long standing content sites with expert written content, so perhaps search engines show us prominently to people the engines believe are looking for that, and less so for people it believes want to “interact”.
It’s a possibility due to behaviorally based search engine results.
Anyway, I don’t mind. Clearly, another experiment is done, time to move on.
