Accepting the Newbie User
Friday, February 11, 2000
by Mark Hurst
In this excellent Salon.com article, the author, Lydia Lee, tries to convince a "newbie" user to switch from AOL to an ISP like Earthlink. Curt, the AOL user, refuses her advances on the grounds that AOL is so easy to use. A consultant quoted in the article agrees: "AOL made it a lot easier for people who didn't know much about computers... These people were smart, competent people in their field, but their eyes would start to glaze over if you tried to explain how to send a binary file."
Curt's determination to stay with AOL forces Lydia to examine why she wants Curt to switch: "I start to realize that my crusade to spring him from AOL is rooted, at least somewhat, in an 'insidery' notion of what being online is supposed to mean... For Curt and millions of others, being online may mean something different from what it means for me."
Lydia's story is a refreshingly honest description of the "insidery" attitude that the Web industry grew up with. People wear a badge for having been on the Net in the early days, braving the difficult interfaces, before AOL came and ruined it. AOL, blast it, made it so easy that millions of people stampeded in and ruined the party for all of us cool people. Or so the attitude goes.
Excluding people from the Net is not only a bad business decision, it's just wrong. The great benefits of the Net should be available to all people who want it, regardless of how technologically savvy they are. Who are we, a few "insidery" computer geeks, to deny people the benefits of the online world? Why should we be exclusive in our design, exclusive in our technology, to keep the experience so difficult and confusing that only a computer expert can use our services?
If the Net was a zero-sum game, I might feel differently. That is, if by inviting the masses we (the technologically savvy) LOST our space online, I might tend to feel less inclusive. (A real-world example is the Wal-Mart that opens outside town and kills off the charming mom-and-pop stores on Main Street... though some people dispute even that idea.)
But the Net is not a zero sum game. That's the key to the whole discussion: there is infinite space online! If Curt wants to use AOL, let Curt use AOL; his choice doesn't make YOUR experience any different, since you can still go to all the tech-savvy, high-bandwidth, or otherwise complex sites that you desire.
Thanks again to Lydia Lee for a thought-provoking article. (And just to clarify: I don't think that Lydia was being exclusive in encouraging Curt to switch; I'm just referring to the industry's "insidery attitude" that affects the customer experience online.)
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