Give up control, by Jeffrey Veen

Give up control

All of these things are probably true of the work you do online:

Your web site is a tiny piece of a much larger experience.

Nobody sees your web site the way you expected. Few use your content the way you intended.

Everything you create online is being ripped apart and recombined with other stuff by thousands of curious geeks. Or at least, should be.

The easiest way to fail is by trying to control all this.

The really frightening thing is that this has always been true on the web. We've only just begun to understand this, come to terms with it, and learn to exploit it.

Anyone following the philosophical underpinnings of the Web 2.0 meme will recognize these ideas. They originate with the zeitgeist of the Internet itself -- rough consensus and working code was the only way to build such a broad technological co-op. Tim O'Rielly often traces this to the open source movement and it's culture of participation.

We've been tracking and contributing to these ideas for a while now at Adaptive Path -- the implications for design, architecture, and experience on the web are tremendous. In particular, my partner Peter Merholz has been thinking and writing about what he dubs the "sandbox." From his essay on our site, he suggested:

The Web’s lesson is that we have to let go, to exert as little control as necessary. What are the fewest necessary rules that we can provide to shape the experience? Where do people, tools, and content come together? How do we let go in a way that’s meaningful and relevant to our business?

Peter has set up a new blog, "Designing for the Sandbox," to further discuss these ideas. Get on over there and have a look.

This entry was written by Jeffrey Veen and posted 26 September 2005 at 11:42 PM. It was filed under Technology, Web Design.

Comments

1. On 26 September 2005 at 11:54 PM Mike P. wrote:

I don't *intend* to sound cynical, but don't forget:

"Everything you create online is being ripped apart and recombined with other stuff by thousands of money hungry content scraping geeks."

:-)

2. On 27 September 2005 at 1:22 AM Colin Ramsay wrote:

"Nobody sees your web site the way you expected. Few use your content the way you intended."

Indeed. People will either misinterpret your content or find a clever geek way to reuse it in new ways.

3. On 10 October 2005 at 7:24 AM Bob Robertson-Boyd wrote:

I'm struck by the timeliness of this post. Where was the tipping point that brought this meme out off our collective subconscious?

I'm telling a bunch of higher ed. professionals the same thing in a couple days at a marketing conference in SF. "You don’t control your message."

My co-presenter and I are trying to introduce the participatory meme to colleges and universities.

4. On 18 October 2005 at 11:21 PM Shrikant Joshi wrote:

Agree with Bob. Timeless post, indeed.

But my question is: Is letting go really that easy?

The content that you write, is used in a different context by the millions that crawl the WWW. Then again, we are entering the era of participation and collaboration with Web 2.0. So, do we make it necessary for content to 'be' in context?

The whole thing boils down to: If context is so necessary, should or shouldn't we enforce it with our content? Why?

Any answers?