internet – Page 5 – Sonya Ellen Mann

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The Skimm: News For Enthusiasts Who Don’t Want To Hunt It Down Themselves

Posted on February 21, 2015April 20, 2015 by Sonya Mann

Update: I got bored with The Skimm and unsubscribed.

Disclaimer: The following post contains an affiliate link, although I’m not clear on what actually happens when people click it. Do I get money? Wouldn’t that be awesome? There was talk of a tote bag if ten people sign up through my link, but beyond that I don’t know the specifics. A tote bag! The glory of it!

The Skimm

Recently I subscribed to an email news service called The Skimm, because it was mentioned in a series of interviews by Melody Joy Kramer, in which people who don’t work in news comment on the news (to echo Kramer’s phrasing). One of the respondees recommended The Skimm. I was curious; I clicked; I conquered. (Assuming that your definition of “conquered” is extremely broad.)

Here is how The Skimm’s founders describe their venture: “News is not only our career, it’s our passion. Because of this, we have always been the go-to source for friends seeking the scoop on current events or breaking news. We soon realized three things: Reading the news is time consuming; Wanting to read the news is a hobby; lastly, not everyone has the time or interest.”

The Skimm team overviews current events, then summarizes the highlights into a humorous, easily digestible email. Lighthearted intros can feel awkward when the subject is human rights tragedies, but for the most part The Skimm is a great way to get a quick daily dose of information.

From a marketing perspective, The Skimm’s setup is really smart. There is a downside to serializing what is basically a blog as an email newsletter: old posts won’t continue to gather pageviews and improve your “Google juice”. However, the huge upside is that you don’t depend on anything outside of yourself for traffic.

Okay, it’s not quite that simple. Outside forces do influence how many new people sign up, but your main core of readers has already committed to you and provided valuable personal information. Furthermore, when gathering sponsors/advertisers, you can point out that email has really good stats.

Go ahead and check out the website if you’re interested—The Skimm has an open archive so you can look at recent emails and see if they are something you want in your inbox.

Instapaper Saves You from Terrible Web Design

Posted on February 10, 2015August 24, 2016 by Sonya Mann

I have vehement feelings about web design, especially since I read a lot of articles online. The overall principle is that simplicity trumps everything. Well, everything except functionality. I wanna be able to frickin’ do whatever I’m trying to do on the website!

Usually all I’m trying to do is read something. However, most online publishers don’t prioritize my ability to process the content they post. I find this astounding. Don’t they want me to derive value from their sites and feel motivated to return? Apparently not. It’s baffling.

Here is my rubric for judging a website:

Large font. Like, 16-point Times New Roman or larger. (Unfortunately, text is almost never big enough. Luckily I can fix the problem with Ctrl+.)
Black-on-white text. Any other combination is less readable. Pale grey text, even on a white background, is especially obnoxious.
Minimal visual clutter. Adblocking is a phenomenal help, but I do feel guilty about using it on websites that I want to support.

According to these rules, The Awl is a good website, but not a perfect one. Its sister site The Hairpin sucks. Medium is even better than The Awl. (I considered taking screenshots to document the websites’ current forms, but on the other hand, whatever.) The rest of the internet publishers range from “mediocre” to “I can’t believe this is a professional endeavor; shoot me”.

AND YET! THERE IS HOPE. I recently started using a service called Instapaper, which Ryan Holiday suggested in one of his articles. Instapaper exists as a website, Chrome extension, and phone app. The service enables you to save articles to read later and has an adaptable interface similar to the Kindle app. In their own words, “Instapaper is the simplest way to save and store articles for reading: offline, on-the-go, anytime, anywhere, perfectly formatted.” Usually a brand’s self-description is hyperbole, but not in this case. Instapaper is right on the money.

But wait, are they? Without running tons of ads, how can Instapaper be financially sustainable? The answer is Instapaper Premium, an upgrade that costs $29.99 per year, which I just bought. I don’t even want the expanded features, although I may use them now that I have them. What I want is to support technologies that make my life — in this case my media consumption — better.

Curious about the articles that I’ve been queueing up? Check out my Instapaper profile.

The YouTube Response

Posted on February 9, 2015April 2, 2015 by Sonya Mann

The following essay is a response to “The YouTube Effect” by Moises Naim, which you can read online at Foreign Policy or the Los Angeles Times.

Since the invention of Gutenberg’s legendary printing press, human communication has only kept speeding up. The advent of the internet and widespread use of smartphones mean that anyone in the world can connect with anyone else, across oceans and continents–provided that they have good tech support, of course. Our global communication infrastructure continues to expand, followed by equally momentous sociopolitical ramifications. YouTube exemplifies this phenomenon, reigning unchallenged as the most popular video-sharing website. Aside from hosting a prodigious number of cute cat clips and one-person comedy efforts, YouTube has proved to be the place where “the revolution will be televised.”

Critics are alarmed by the gore and horror waiting just a few clicks away from any web-savvy kid, but they forget that human violence has always been accessible to those who search for it (as well as accessible to unlucky bystanders and civilians). The content on YouTube is nothing new; humans have been interested in the same topics for centuries, and will be for many more. What is significant is that YouTube is Marx’s means of production pressed into the hands of the people. The website provides a publishing venue for anything that regular citizens see, hear, and think, available almost instantly to anyone anywhere–provided that they enter the right search term.

To be fair, YouTube only permits an illusion of democratized communication. After all, it is owned by Google, a company analogous to an online government: you can choose to operate outside of its strictures, but most people don’t bother with the hassle. Google doesn’t entirely choose what succeeds on YouTube, but they can make something popular or simply remove something else, at will. For the most part they don’t, because any content that draws traffic will lead to advertising revenue. YouTube doesn’t exist to give people a place to freely share what they’ve documented. Rather, it exists to make money for Google.

Nevertheless, YouTube provides both theater and audience for a flourishing short-form art scene. Web series have made the jump to TV, and careers have grown out of the ability to speak well into the webcam. Financial requirements for film production have plummeted, especially now that everyone’s phone captures video and myriad editing programs can be downloaded for free. Journalism is no longer exclusively professional. Big websites and TV channels routinely source content from YouTube (and their segments are parodied in return).

In “The YouTube Effect”, Moises Naim points out, “It is now harder to know what to believe.” Thank goodness! It is far better that people question what they see and read, cultivating healthy, inquiring skepticism. No one should simply accept whatever The New York Times publishes as unassailable fact. Prestigious news hubs are just as susceptible to bias and hoax as are individuals on the street. Later in the essay, Naim concludes, “the good news is that the YouTube effect is already creating a strong demand for reliable guides”, meaning trustworthy entities that will help us sort through the sheer volume of media being produced and shared.

The better news is that YouTube is just like every other advance in communication technology: it provides a quick, colloquialized way for people to share and connect. What brings us together? The same interests that always have: cute babies, money, sex, music, laughter. YouTube is simply part of the centuries-long trend of these topics 1) being shared faster and 2) being produced by more average Joes.

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