Here are these week’s interesting reads:
I get an F for reading comprehension. Thanks for the catch Mark. (How did i miss that?!!#!@)
On Amazon’s Ex-Employee: Awesome, I wish I could speak so highly of any company I’ve quit.
On the Web Usability: If more people had to USE the designs they come up with, a lot of these would probably go away on their own.
On Internet Advertising: Interesting, especially the reaction, but I do think he might have spoken too much from a “savvy” perspective. Intrusive ads may go away, but contextual ads have some use and a lot of people get them confused with content when the two things are threaded transparently. Also, I didn’t see anything where he mentioned advertising as a subliminal brand-building (I’m thirsty and for some reason I want a Coke), but then again he said LESS not COMPLETELY GONE.
Good stuff!
The online advertising article is very interesting. He makes two crucial points.
1) We don’t want/trust ads. After all, they’re designed to persuade us, not to help us make informed decisions.
2) We no longer need ads. Review sites are far more helpful and extensive.
I wrote a reaction piece to it here:
http://www.whyweworry.com/blog/2009/06/29/why-advertising-will-fail-on-the-internet/
Regarding your comment that the blogger talking about Amazon doesn’t mention his position, this is in the second paragraph of his first numbered point:
I worked as a software developer on the Email Platform team.
So he does state his position, just to correct the record.