Nerds ARE Better in Bed

If you're offended by nerds, sex or biased opinions, switch off now.

Speaking of new and wonderful things, I'd like to talk about the nerd. The new nerd. The gen Y nerd born after 1981. The nerd that doesn't excrete grease, smell like garlic or have a nervous eye twitch.

The age-old myth that nerds don't get any is rubbish. I've noticed that all my best friends are in love with new-age nerds, have crushes on them or talk dreamily about how that guy can "Fix things! With his hands!". One of my friends is dating an audio technician, another an IT support guy, a sci-trance composer, a software developer. It leads me to the inevitable conclusion that new nerds must not only be better in bed, but better at keeping you satisfied for longer in other life departments.

There's a lot to be said for the new nerd, he can fix almost anything and is usually agreeable to do so because it sparks his recovery program. He never gets boring: he has ten thousand interests drawn from the deepest depths of the Internet. He's always up to date on news, has an opinion about everything technological, cracks all your favourite 1990s RPGs and presents you with an 80G hard drives because "everyone needs one". As my own new-age nerd boyfriend elaborates: "We know a lot more about sex than you think. We know how to use the Internet to search for anything and everything about sex. We got the theoretics down pat." Not commenting on my boyfriend's performance - we've been together three years - but what about the practical side to hanky panky?

Editor Emily from humour and lifestyle website Lemondrop has a four prong theory about nerds putting it into practice:

1. If you're ugly (and maybe nerds, both boys and girls, fall short on good looks, I dunno), you have to try harder in bed

2. Nerds have excessive hand-eye coordination from playing video games

3. Nerds have an understanding of complicated machinery, like, ahem, the "vaginal machinery"

4. Geeks love gadgets: they're more likely to employ sex toys in bed

If sex gadgets aren't your thing and you're unwilling to substitute muscles for cool machinery (hellooo Open Source router!), why not invest in one of the many nerds who actually go to the gym? I did a quick headcount of my geeky male friends and found that 70%, that's 7/10, work out at least three times a week.

Niche Markets and The Long Tail

We've always had niche markets, shops that sell one thing only (buttons, fake hair, red shoes), services for a particular hobby (smurf colleting), esoteric books for strange people. It seems only rational with the rapid growth of the Internet, that such a widely flung net of bits and bytes would capture and cultivate the interests of a billion individuals. With so many people using the Web for everything except brushing their teeth (I'm sure there's an app for that), companies started making websites and products to target smaller demographics. And with all the niche websites and products, rose opportunities for consumers to explore deeper and deeper into the unfathomable vortext of the Web. Readers of books and magazines, newspapers and manga, we avid consumers of the printed word started exploring too.

My theory - heavily influenced by Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail articles, books and blog, is that the digital age may be the death of the blockbuster book culture we've been experiencing for the past 50 years. The blockbuster complex (first coined by Thomas Whiteside in 1981), beloved of booksellers and big publishers who push those hugely popular books by the Dan Browns, Tom Clancys and Stephenie Meyers, may be flirting a war with the infinite choice provided by the Internet.

Such diveristy in choice didn't just surface with the Internet. The blockbuster complex's rise in the book market was due in part to commercial booksellers and book retailers like Borders, and Barnes and Noble. These international book superstores can easily stock 100,000 titles in store - much more than your average back-alley bookshop.

The digital age initiated the publishing industry to the e-book and online retail: 160 publishers currently have Internet publishing businesses that produce, publish, distribute and sell e-books. As of 2001, Cope and Ziguras (two RMIT professors) counted over 10,000 publications for sale by download via Internet publishers. Just imagine how many there are now. There are books for sale in store, online, e-books, Print on Demand books, e-bay books, book-swapping forums, books coming out the wahzoo. Naturally, consumers had more choice, developed a taste for their raison d'etre and now want more.

Chris Anderson's theory is that the blockbuster model which supports the ‘head’ of the market, where consumers rapidly buy millions of copies of the same book, is being balanced with the ‘Long Tail’ of consumers that purchase a large of number of ‘non-hit’ items over a longer period of time. Online retail giants like Amazon - unrestricted by the physical space of a bookstore - can market billions of different titles at once. Amazon has a total inventory of 3.7 million book titles and compared to a typical Borders or Barnes and Noble of 100,000 titles, makes it easy to find those books that can't be found anywhere else. Here is a dinosaur chart from Edgwater Technology Weblog to demonstrate the Long Tail:
The niche-spawning effects of digital technology is just a new development of what book publishing used to be before the blockbuster complex; companies relying on steady long-term sales of mid-list titles with the opportunity to explore publishing new authors who in turn also became mid-listers. The wheel of history is repeating, just in a new way. Maybe the ‘death of the book’ (the death of books as physical objects) as online retailers and e-books become more popular, will be a re-birth of largely ignored book genres. As consumers explore further down the Long Tail, perhaps we will see an upsurge in sales of "quality" literature (and by "quality", I mean anything that is well-written and edited).

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos once said his goal was: "to make every book available – the good, the bad, and the ugly." The Web has enabled us to see the light at the end of the blockbuster tunnel - the good among the bad and the ugly. I love ye olde bookstore, but for science fiction and fantasy readers like me, the online book market has opened up new vistas. I am going see if I can order Patrick Rothfuss' new novel - which comes out in Australian bookstores in December - off Amazon. Don't damn me for not supporting Australian publishers. I need it. I'm a niche market.

If you're interested in the Long Tail theory you can read Chris Anderson's Blog on Wired.

Evaluating Web Writing: A Case Study of Three Online Music Magazines

Study 1: Rolling Stone

Rolling Stone is a music magazine that also covers politics, film, social issues, news and popular culture. It has a diverse audience who are interested in music (especially rock and roll) and popular culture; readers span all ages, from teenagers to 60+.

The homepage successfully produces the ‘alternative rock and roll’ feel of the Rolling Stone brand using bold red headlines and a white background. Research has shown that a particular typeface has a powerful effect on meaningful brand names and subsequent profit potential. Doyle and Bottomley noted that a product “with a congruent font…was more likely to be chosen for further investigation and for purchase than one that was presented in an incongruent font” (cited in Shaikh, Chapparo and Fox 2009, 1).

The homepage adopts an online newspaper format by using a vertical flow of text with information grouped by subject or idea into boxed portlets. News stories are presented prominently with bold headlines and kickers; each headline is a link to a separate page containing the full story. Good website design and information layout adds to Rolling Stones’ credibility. Morkes and Nielsen explained that “a website conveys an image, too. If it’s tastefully done, it can add a lot of credibility to the site” (1997, 5).

The homepage has many links to other news stories, photo galleries, blog archives and RSS feeds. Excluding advertisements, all links on the homepage are internal, except for links to Listen.com, a premium business partner that lists Rolling Stone as a recommended website, and Rhapsody, a subscription media player owned by Rolling Stone’s parent company All Media Guide.

The homepage prominently promotes the news story ‘Rivers Cuomo: We Ripped Off “The Sweater Song” From Metallica’ by using a bold headline, striking picture and brief kicker that are links to the storypage. The storypage can also be found by clicking on the ‘news’ tab on the top horizontal navigation bar and scrolling through an archive of recent articles. The storypage is easy to find and navigate to; the homepage successfully promotes the story through ease of user access.

Navigation around the storypage is easy as information is grouped into logical and manageable sections. All links contained within the news story lead internally to stories with related content and are used to provide readers with a background context for the story and additional information on the subject. Nielsen noted that “true hypertext should also make users feel that they can move freely through the information, according to their own needs” (1997, 4). These links encourage readers to explore the website and spend more time following threads of information according to their own needs and interest.

The news story and other content use a readable sans-serif typeface consistent with a newspaper style and use wide kerning and space between lines. Though the text alignment is un-justified, the lines of text are all of a similar length within the portlet; this increases the story’s readability.

The story is written in an ‘inverted pyramid’ format that presents important information first. Jakob Nielsen noted several user studies confirmed the effectiveness of the inverted pyramid style, as users tended to read only the first part of an article and did not enjoy scrolling through long texts (cited in Pack 2000). The story is ‘chunked’ into short paragraphs with clear topic sentences. This logical division of information aids reader retention and ease of scanning the article for key points. The story is written using simple language that is credible in its professionalism.

The headline stands out from other text on the storypage and picks up all the keywords in the article. While these keywords are successfully integrated in the story through repeated use and hyperlinks, they are not utilised for ‘tags’.

The large action photograph of Rivers Cuomo is striking and relevant to the news story. The picture is aesthetically effective as it mirrors the red colour scheme of Rolling Stone and adds to the overall harmony and credibility of the storypage.

A commentary/feedback section invites reader discussion and increases user-activity and interest in the website. This aids in a sense of community and shared values for the Rolling Stone brand and makes the story seem in the ‘public interest’. However, it is noted that Rolling Stone often deletes, revises and omits the commentary section from the website (Wikipedia 2009)

Study 2: Mojo (The Music Magazine)

Mojo was founded in 1993 and is printed monthly in the UK. Mojo has been noted for its in-depth knowledge of classic rock and coverage of lesser-known ‘left-field’ bands (Wikipedia 2009). Mojo primarily targets a British audience and is aimed at a younger demographic than Rolling Stone: an estimated reader age-span between 13-30 years.

Mojo online has chosen similar token colours to Rolling Stone, with a nominal black, white, and red scheme to give a modern ‘edgy rock’ feel. The homepage has a roughly vertical text-flow with portlets of content. It is graphic intensive, with colour-heavy banner links to articles and flashing text. The homepage is crammed with content and uses a small font which is difficult to read. News stories are presented most prominently in the top left-hand corner of the page, with each story containing a headline, kicker and picture linked to a separate storypage. The busy design and clustered organisation of content makes the homepage less readable and more frustrating to navigate than Rolling Stone.

The homepage has links to news stories, feature articles, internal blogs, and actively promotes merchandise and magazine subscription. The website features links to Aloud.com, an affiliated ticketing company owned by Mojo’s parent company, Bauer Media.

The homepage displays the news story ‘Ralfe Band Get In On The Abbey Road Act’ prominently, but readers are easily distracted by the larger graphics and flashing text of other content. The storypage can be easily found using the ‘news’ tab on the top horizontal navigation bar and scrolling down an archive list.

The storypage contains less content and fewer distracting graphics than the homepage, which aids navigation and emphasises use of the top navigation bar. Two links within the news story are used to promote the Ralfe Band and their singer Oly Ralfe: one link to the Ralfe Band’s MySpace page and another to Oly Ralfe’s personal project. The links are incorporated clumsily into the text, using the words ‘right here’ as the hypertext link and ambiguously using ‘AJ Webermen’ as the hypertext for Oly Ralfe’s documentary. An imbedded YouTube video further promotes the band and provides background context for the story. The use of external links to YouTube, MySpace and an external website signifies Mojo is willing to use free content as well as internal content that will promote the Mojo brand and products. Prominent links to RSS feeds to Digg, Reddit, Facebook and Delicious are successful in promoting Mojo brand and products.

The news story uses a legible sans-serif typeface, but lacks space between letters, lines and paragraphs. The story is written in a ‘hip’ style and is full of music jargon and pop-culture references that disrupt the flow of the story and makes text-scanning impossible. Kissane (2008) wrote, “there’s a time for professional jargon: when you know you’re speaking to an audience that understands you, and you need the extra specificity and precision that jargon can provide. If you’re using it outside of that situation, you’re probably not communicating clearly, honestly, or effectively.”

Logical idea progression and topic sentences are missing from the story and make it frustrating and annoying to read. Pack (2000) noted that “Web users are busy; they want to get the straight facts… credibility suffers when users clearly see that the site exaggerates.” The story loses credibility using unnecessary jargon.

Keywords are used ineffectively in the story or throughout the storypage. The headline uses only two key phrases ‘Ralfe Band’ and ‘Abbey Road’, which are not emphasised during the story. The tagged word ‘Beatles’ links to a search engine that draws up a good selection of related stories, but a ‘Ralfe Band’ search produces no other content.

Study 3: Mess+Noise

Mess+Noise is an Australian music community website that produces a print magazine. The target audience of Mess+Noise is young adults interested in local (Melbourne-focused) music and artists.

The homepage is simply designed and uses a vertical, column format. White space and an uncomplicated colour scheme make the homepage easily navigable. Information is logically represented under well-defined categories; the homepage displays boxed graphics and content grouped by bullet points under subheadings. The simplicity of design and colour scheme make the homepage seem ‘empty’ and gives the impression Mess+Noise is more amateur than Rolling Stone and Mojo.

The homepage promotes links to internal stories, reviews, event schedules, film clips, discussion boards and ticketing and does not emphasise Mess+Noise products as powerfully as Rolling Stone or Mojo. The homepage actively promotes the news story ‘Songs On The Road’ by using a large picture and headline. The story is easily found within ‘music news’ under the ‘features’ tab in the top navigation bar.

The storypage reiterates the simple design and ease of navigation evident on the homepage. The storypage is light on content – it contains only the story, a comments section and a side-bar of similar news stories and updates. The story contains only one internal link to ‘Spring Tones’, a music festival organised by Mess+Noise.

The tag ‘songs’ is too ambiguous and the linked search engine pulls up pages of unrelated material. Promotion of Mess+Noise is successfully integrated in the ‘share’ tab on the top of the storypage: it links to over 50 social networking websites, email and news websites, which encourages readers to share Mess+Noise information.

The news story and other content use a serif typeface that is easy to read. The story is written in a conversational tone that builds a sense of casual acquaintance and reinforces Mess+Noise’s community-based values. The story is logically chunked, but the subheading ‘Songs On The Road’ (the same as the headline) is confusing and disconnected from the following event schedule. The content of the story is easily readable, but is spoiled by too many hyphens in the first paragraph.

The story headline could be better worded to avoid ambiguity and could stand out more from other text. The headlines does not pick up the keywords ‘travel’, ‘tour’ or ‘new album’ from the story. Keywords are not used to full potential to link readers to relevant information. The unattractive photograph of band ‘Songs’ is not effective in promoting the story and the red/pink curtain background draws the eye away from story content.

The comments section lends Mess+Noise a credibility that is lacking from the absence of links and related content. The commentators seem casually familiar with each other and follow discussion threads. Wardrip-Fruin said “the ability to interact with a text seems much greater on the part of those who have written-and those, of course, who have some of its subject and tools for analysis” (1996, 357). This interactivity is especially important considering Mess+Noise’s audience and aim to create an online community.

Conclusion

Rolling Stone produced the most positive response in optimisation of content to the online environment. The homepage and storypage design are effective and navigable, the writing style professional and the story format easily readable. Rolling Stone is most effective in promoting a brand-name and a ‘feel’ for readers, encouraging readers to spend more time on the website, and cross-promoting related content through links.