A couple incidents today reminded me about the short attention spans people have these days. There is so little time to catch people’s attention and hardly more to hold it.
I was in a session today where the college marketing director was unveiling the new website design. She mentioned that one tip she recently picked up is that no sentence on a website should have more than eight words in it. (Something I haven’t managed to do yet in this entry)
The second example comes in the form of Harriet Klausner, a woman who has reviewed the most books on Amazon.com. She reads 4-5 books each day. So much stock is put in her opinions, publishers send her boxes of books each day to read.
It brings to mind two years ago when Michael Kinsley caught a lot of flak for admitting he didn’t read all 400+ books sent him to judge for the National Book Prize. He said it was impossible to be expected to read them all. He admitted he didn’t even crack the spine on many having judged his interest in them from the covers.
Harriet says much the same thing. There are books and authors she doesn’t care much about reading. She writes mostly positive reviews because she doesn’t get too far into the ones she doesn’t like or doesn’t feel there is any value in writing poor reviews.
People say the schools are failing us, but it is tough not to see a little shared responsibility about the values being communicated when the President boasts about being a C student and not reading; literary prize judges who boast about judging books by covers and voting for the book everyone presumed would win anyway; and a woman who is voted top Amazon.com reviewer for saying generally positive things about books she rushes through.
I imagine we will reach a point soon (if we haven’t already) where plot development can only span the length of the average music video or else people start to tune out. (On the other hand, the success of shows like 24 where it takes half a year to resolve a story arc gives some hope perhaps)
I would expound a bit more, but I don’t want my post to become too long *wink*
Voodoo Advertising
Have you ever, especially recently, been to a conference/retreat/seminar on marketing or advertising and thought you just hadn’t learned any new techniques or strategies in a long time? You ain’t alone. The New Yorker had a story this week about…