The blogosphere has constructed an interesting paradox.
- On the one side readers/viewers/subscribers are mostly interested in quality content. There are numerous blogs and little time; we want to spend our online time – and consequently attention – on blogs that provide quality information. At least that’s what several blog posts are argumenting (How to boost your blog traffic).
- On the other side though, writing a perfect post seems like a trap. When the entry has said it all, then there isn’t much more to say. The blogosphere is mostly an interactive medium (if it can be called a medium) and perfect posts just don’t encourage this interaction (why you shouldn’t be a perfectionist).
Imperfection; the web paradigm
The World Wide Web is human. It is made by humans, for humans and shares a universally human characteristic: imperfection. It consists of millions connections created by people who are willing to communicate.
These connections, as a human construct, are very often broken. It occurs quite often while ’surfing’ to reach a dead-end link, a link that does not exist anymore, is deleted or replaced with completely different material as expected. But no one is annoyed, simply because that is how the web is built; imperfect.
Users happily sacrifice the perfection of a centralized system for an imperfect decentralized network. It is this decentralized structure of the web that makes it so interesting, so democratic and so polyphonic. There is no single power, which chooses who posts what, where and when. Anyone can be part of the web. This fact makes us see perfection under a new lens.
The blogosphere; being informal
In the web, we are facing an ambiguous attitude towards perfection. On the one hand people want to express themselves informally - a sign of interaction between individuals, between human beings. Communicating according to specific rules and suggestions homogenizes the public, a feature highly avoided in the social web.
Everyone wants to have its own, personal voice. This multitude of expressions and voices gives the social web its power; sometimes it is not only intriguing to see what one says, but also how it says it. But being informal also comes along with mistakes.
This does not mean that the users will not get interested to an imperfect post. On the contrary, they will comment on it and propose improvements. The web fascinates users, because it provides direct, informal interaction not because it provides perfect content.
Imperfection as a means of communication
It is true that knowledge is highly praised (offline and online), but this does not mean that it will draw the attention of the crowd.
Material provided by an expert, is usually accompanied with a sense of authority, meaning that it is not open for discussions; it is supposed to be perfect. Users have nothing to add to it, so they just passively read it. But this is not the purpose of the social web. People want to interact, to discuss and argue about subjects – they want to be productive. Perfect content refrains from such a discourse. Occasionally, professionalism stands as an obstacle to development.
The collective intelligence
Of course the presence of experts is needed in the social web to encourage knowledge and provide solutions. But when we are dealing with a collective intelligence, communication and participation can, at times, have much better results. In a group, the individual knowledge loses its importance and the collective wisdom becomes the center of focus. Sometimes when our imperfect judgments are aggregated in the right way, our collective intelligence is often excellent.
The problem
I still don’t get it though. Do readers prefer authoritative posts (so that they don’t look around for other sources), or they like an imperfect post, which encourages a discussion?
