Content being king in a Web 2.0 World

In light of our latest post on Steve Blinn’s powerful calling out of the many lies his fellow PRs folks commit, we point out one in particular: “We Know Web 2.0″. So true.

Then, Over at Logic + Emotion, David Armano challenges us again by declaring “Content is the next killer app”. He lays in on the line by pointing to a Globe and Mail article in which a Martha Stewart Living media president Wanda Harris Millard laments that their newly designed site is not working out. And it is strictly because of the design. “Beauty’ and a certain ‘look’ were held in higher regard than utility, and the result was a site that may have looked wonderful, but didn’t give its visitors what they wanted.

“We put beauty before utility.” She said the front page, with its video player and jazzy graphics, included only about five links to actual content, “so the things people were looking for couldn’t be found.”

The mistake, she said, was in failing to understand that “when the reader or viewer or listener becomes the user, what she’s looking for is much different — at least initially.”

Publisher must realize that their websites, while they are most definitely a reflection of them and their brand and their image, aren’t meant for them. They’re meant for us. The reader, the user, the visitor.

We want a particular type of content. We may love a certain look, but we don’t want it to get in the way. Hmmm…come to think of it, content has always been the killer app.

So next time your agency says they ‘know Web 2.0″, ask them how they design around content and not the other way around.