Unit Interactive :: Blog :: Fake Web Content

Fake Web Content

by Andy on 7.30.08 | Comments (7)

Do you know how to tell useless, fake articles (sorry, “posts”) on the Web from the actually substantive ones? I do; it’s easy. If the title starts with a number?i.e. “7 Ways to Improve Your Blog” or “20 of the Best Design Practices,” etc??it’s junk 999 times out of 1000.

Clear evidence aside, lately I’ve seen a few articles or posts that advise blog authors?and I use the term “authors” very loosely?that the way to get their post on Digg or some other fustercluck is to use numbers in their titles. So aside from the fact that nearly all of these posts have no valuable content, you may know that the author has no purpose in sharing it except to try and get search engine or aggregator visibility. All such “authors” are defining themselves according to a very low and regrettable standard.

The net result of all of this is that the Web is being choked by trashy, attention-gaming junk that is being offered for reasons other than informing one’s fellow enthusiasts and colleagues of anything notable or useful. What’s more, news/article aggregators have become time-wasting caricatures of what they’re supposed to be, and are now all but worthless.

Categories: Miscellaneous, Writing

Permalink | Comments (7)

» Fake Web Content :: Wednesday, July 30, 2008 3:33 pm

[...] can read the rest of this blog post by going to the original source, here [...]

Ian :: Thursday, July 31, 2008 6:12 pm

I can’t help but think this article should be titled “10 ways to spot useless or fake posts”..

Andy :: Friday, August 1, 2008 7:42 am

Mmmm, yes. Perhaps this post is useless. And perhaps I’ve touched a nerve, too.

blackBoar :: Friday, August 1, 2008 6:36 pm

Considering that this ‘article’ consists merely of a 3 paragraphs long announcement (oooh) of a damn evident and already widely known fact, I don’t know why do you get so pissed off about this being said in your comments. Could you please ellaborate on that?

That way maybe you could eventually add another 3 paragraphs long ‘article’ on how to cope with criticism

Andy :: Friday, August 1, 2008 7:03 pm

@blackboar:
I’m afraid that I’m not sure where you’re picking up on “pissed off” here. So far as I can tell, there has been no display of emotion from anyone. Is it possible you’re engaging in transference?

Anyway, this was not an article. It was a blog post meant to call out what is becoming an unfortunate trend. It is clear that it challenges some here.

As for an article (a real one) on comping with criticism, I did that some time back, here: http://www.andyrutledge.com/criticism.php#fragment-4 . I hope you get something worthwhile from it.

Bartek :: Saturday, August 2, 2008 7:02 pm

I don’t think that giving a post a particular type of title makes that post (article) worthless. It’s about the content, not the title!

And I think you’d admit that a title with some numbers can be just as good and as meaningful as one without them. You do read Jakob’s Alertboxes, surely. Go ahead and check their titles: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/. Quite a few of them have (or even start with) numbers in them, and we wouldn’t call them worthless, would we? If Jakob does it, it suggests that it doesn’t violate any usability conventions (I’m not saying anything that Jakob does is OK).

It would be really… not smart to artificially add or remove items to get a nice looking number (i.e. “10 ways” instead of “8 ways”), but you really don’t have to do that and it’s not done that often.

Oh, another example: http://24ways.org/ . That’s quite a cool site, at least for me.

I really don’t think that the examples I’ve mentioned all qualify for the 1 of 1000 rule. Well, maybe they actually do, but I suppose you can say that 99.9% of ALL articles/posts in the Internet are crappy. I just really doubt that their titles have much to do with it.

Btw. I think that creating a “N ways/whatevers to …” article can actually improve its readability/accessibility. It encourages dividing them into a few parts, and putting some headings in. That’s actually good.

I’d say that you overreacted a bit in this post (and not in the comments, obviously). IMO a crappy author will produce crappy articles, and a good one will do much better. Regardless of their titling conventions.

PS. Maybe that wasn’t the best way for writing my first comment here, but… I owe you saying that I’ve read nearly all of your articles at Design View. Nuff said :) (I don’t have to always agree with you, do I?)