Douglas McLennan: April 2011 Archives
Journalists know the importance of correct grammar. Even tiny factually insignificant errors can erode the confidence of a reader. One rap about blogs is that because they don't have editors, they can have more errors. So just how important is clean copy in influencing readers? Online retailers have tried to find out. And now they have some quantifiable evidence.
An online retailer noticed that indeed products with high-quality reviews are selling well. So, they decided to take action. They used Amazon Mechanical Turk to improve the quality of its reviews. Using the Find-Fix-Verify pattern, they used Mechanical Turk to examine a few millions of product reviews... For the reviews with mistakes, they fixed the spelling and grammar errors! Thus they effectively improved the quality of the reviews on their website. And, correspondingly, they improved the demand for their products!In this test, they didn't change the opinions themselves, merely the typos and grammar. Turns out that even if the user review was negative, fixing the mistakes improved sales.
A review that is well-written tends to inspire confidence about the product, even if the review is negative. Typically such reviews are perceived as objective and thorough. So, if we have a high-quality, but negative, review this may serve as a guarantee that the negative aspects of the product are not that bad after all. For example, a negative review such as "horrible battery life... in my tests battery lasts barely longer than 24 hours..." may be perceived as positive by other customers that consider a 24-hour batter life to be more than sufficient.
I love this post by InsideHigherEd's Josh Kim.Physical things that exist as single-use conduits of information (paper books, paper newspapers, paper magazines) and physical places that are containers or platforms for information delivery (college campuses, bookstores) will persist, and even thrive. However, for these physical conduits and containers to survive, they will either need to move far up-market, or way down-market.Wasn't it ever thus? In the Old World, newspapers were low end and books high. Books were solid and substantial, with nice covers and extravagant paper. Newspapers had crappy paper, lousy print quality and ink that rubbed off on your hands. Newspapers were cheap, timely and disposable; they offered something you couldn't get elsewhere, so we bought them.
Books made of paper will need to be either really beautiful and offer a superior tactile experience, or they will need to be very cheaply produced on thin paper and be basically disposable. I'll be less price sensitive to a paper copy of the NYTimes or a magazine if real attention is paid to the quality of the design, layout, paper, and printing. Or I'll pick-up a free paper newspaper that I may or may not read, and will be skimmed and thrown away.
What I will not buy is any one-time conduit of information (book, magazine, newspaper) that is somewhere in the middle. Too expensive to easily throw away, but too cheaply made to want to keep in my collection.
Might this idea not also apply to arts criticism in the digital world? Low end is easy; Yelp, Amazon, Facebook. "Like" this, become a "fan" of that. Digg, Stumble, Reddit to identify and elevate the "best" content. The "opinions" are disposable (and often worth about as much). And the high end? Can anyone replace a Hilton Als or Carlin Romano essay or a Jonathan Gold food walk?
So what about a sustainable middle? There was one - magazines, which had glossy paper, beautiful design and brilliant photos, and we paid more for them than we did for newspapers. But those daily newspaper reviews whose value more often than not rarely exceeded documentation that a show took place? There doesn't appear to be much of an audience for them. Maybe there's a sustainable middle for arts criticism, but so far I'm not seeing it.
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