Go Flock Yourself - points well taken · Dec 3, 01:30 PM by Ken King
I previously pointed to the Go Flock Yourself review of Transcribr and Enablr for its humour, but there were also some good points in the article and comments that deserve more thought.
The missing e
We know it’s goofy, have said so since day one.
Perpetual beta
Christian Montoya’s comment about our beta tag is funny and on the mark – there are far too many sites with beta splashed all over them. I’m torn about it though, because I happen to believe that there’s always something left to be done, whether it’s with software or any other good or service. Keeping the tag there is a reminder that we should keep looking for ways to improve. There’s a good chance the beta will disappear at some point in the near future
Why don’t you just type it in the first place?
Another comment (by Stu) suggests that “Sure, you could get someone to transcribe your podcast; alternatively, you could stop twatting about with a microphone and just type it in the first place. You know, for free.” I agree – Transcribr was, in part, a response to my frustration at finding more and more content locked up in an audio format that isn’t convenient for me.
However, economists will tell you that there’s a cost to everything, nothing is “for free”: the reason many people podcast rather than write is that it’s easier (costs less) for them to speak than to type things out. For some, it also provides higher value, because it allows them to convey emphasis and emotion without kludgy formatting, acronyms and emoticons: if someone is truly ROTFL, you’d hear that in their podcast and newbies wouldn’t have to trundle off to wikipedia to find out what the acronym means.
Accessibility
Also in Stu’s comment, the fact that nobody seems to give a shit about the fact that some people are deaf: Almost a year ago Andy Carvin posted this piece about podcasting and accessibility in which Steve Gillmor admits that he hadn’t thought about accessibility. I don’t think that anything has changed much over the last year, but I also think that most podcasters would agree that accessibility is a good thing.
The question then becomes whether they value it enough to invest time or money into the solution. For many, the answer may be no. However, improved accessibility could be the unintended consequence of podcasters whose motivation is primarily to improve searchability and ease of use.
Don’t believe the hype
Not limited to this article, the entire Go Flock Yourself site is pretty hard on the Web 2.0 hype, and rightly so. I witnessed the last bubble close up and see the hype for what it is. The best comment I’ve seen about Web 2.0, though, is from Paul Graham. The money quote for me is:
Web 2.0 means using the web the way it’s meant to be used. The “trends” we’re seeing now are simply the inherent nature of the web emerging from under the broken models that got imposed on it during the Bubble.
He also says that we’re not in another bubble for rather prosaic reasons:
The reason this won’t turn into a second Bubble is that the IPO market is gone. Venture investors are driven by exit strategies. The reason they were funding all those laughable startups during the late 90s was that they hoped to sell them to gullible retail investors; they hoped to be laughing all the way to the bank. Now that route is closed.
I agree with that assessment to a point, but I think what he’s missing is that many of the businesses being labelled as “Web 2.0” don’t need VC investment and will quietly disappear when they realize there’s “no there there” rather than imploding noisily the way all the bogus dot.coms did. Perhaps that’s not a bubble in the strictest definition of the term, but it’s close enough.
We flatter ourselves in believing that Enablr is not one of the businesses that will disappear because we’re not trying to feed off that hype: we’re just focused on providing pretty simple, straightforward services, on making it easy for people to use, and on making it profitable.
