Keeping Up With The Webbies
This era could easily be defined as the “Age of Anxiety.” Anyone, and I put myself in this category, that tries to stay current on the latest shifts in technology faces a Sisyphean task.
There’s no one-stop shop for tech news. Instead, techies like me are left scouring Twitter and RSS feeds to look for the “next big thing.” A day doesn’t go by where I don’t see some new blog post that has the potential to totally change how I do my job. All this change makes me nervous and paranoid. I always feel a step behind, and I’m sure I’m not alone in that feeling.
So, I can imagine that those less technologically inclined feel even worse. In order to bridge that gap between the tech nerds and casual users, I’ve put together a brief list of terminology dos and don’ts to give every CEO the street cred he or she needs with his young IT staff.
‘Twittering’
Okay, this is an arbitrary one, but an important nuance. The site for 140-character updates is Twitter.com. But when you update your Twittersphere of followers you are “tweeting” not “twittering.” I’m not sure exactly why that conjugation is correct, but it’s the pervasive use. Stick with tweets and you’ll sound like a pro.
E-Commerce
I hear a lot of folks lumping everything that a business does online under the heading e-commerce. But e-commerce actually refers to, well, commerce online. Unless you're exchanging goods and services for money, you aren’t engaging in e-commerce.
Flash Intros
Don’t let a jazzy Flash intro on a web site dazzle you. While architecture and design firms are partial to these crazy animated intros, it’s best to avoid them.
Why? Because users are coming to your site to find information. They aren’t looking for a show. That’s what YouTube is for.
Speaking Of YouTube
If your business posts video on YouTube, you probably have a YouTube channel. But you don’t have a YouTube. And it’s spelled YouTube, not UTube. Get that one wrong in an e-mail and your staffers are guaranteed to roll their eyes.
Avoid The Dash
It’s online, not on-line. I’m not sure why people have hung onto that dash. Perhaps in the early days of the Internet, people thought the technology would be a passing fad, meaning the two words did not have to be forever combined. But let’s face it. The online world isn’t going anywhere, so we can save ourselves some time and eliminate that hyphen.
Careful readers will also note that I capitalized “Internet.” That elevation of the word to proper noun status is a style used by many stodgy newspapers and one that I find difficult to give up. So, I’ll keep capitalizing it until our readers bombard us with angry letters. (You can find our address on page 28.)
Beware The Scroll
For some reason we’ve all been trained to think the longer a web site is the more valuable it is. But the clear trend in web design that I’m hearing is that scrolling is on its way out.
And if you reflect on your own surfing habits you’ll probably notice that you almost never scroll all the way to the bottom of a web site. Who has time for that?
So, if you want to impress the Gen Yers in your office, start bemoaning the amount of scrolling you have to do on your company’s web site and demand a new design that shortens up the page.
Caution: Interweb
I'm not sure where the word interweb was first born, but it's used frequently by tech afficianados to mock not-so-savvy Internet users.
So, if you hear someone use the word "interweb" or "interwebs," chances are they're mocking you or someone else. If you don't bellieve me, you can look it up on UrbanDictionary.com (yes there is such a thing).
Got news for our Digital Diva column? E-mail Christina H. Davis at cdavis@wbjournal.com.
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