Not the Way to Make Friends
The Internet, especially post Web 2.0, puts everyone on your block. We're talking friend and neighbors now. The time of the customer, user, visitor, et al. is over for good.
Some might say we’re a self-centered lot, trying to carve ourselves a slice of old-school Atari Labs heaven.
Naturally, we care about us, as Maslow indicates you’ve got to take care of yourself first, but we also care a lot about Them. In fact, one of my main concerns at Go flight! is making sure things are good for Them.
The Mysterious Them
Some call them users, customers, clients, guests, visitors, eye-balls, click-throughs, hapless suckers, or droplets in the market share bucket – but all these conceptions leave something to be desired, either because they are needlessly distant, too focused on the monetary exchange portion of the relationship, exploitative, disingenuous, or just plain mean.
All of them are off the mark if you want to feel good about what you do and you want Them to feel good about how you do it. Ask yourself this question, do you want to be called any of these labels at any web site, box store, or popsicle stand you visit? We all tolerate them, but to me they always come off sounding funny. We're doing this for the customers, visitors, or eye-balls doesn't sound very inspiring either.
