Lessons From A Laggard: FastCompany.com Shows How Not To Do Online Content

I’m a regular reader of about half a dozen business magazines, and one of them is FastCompany.com. I’ve been subscribing to the RSS feed of FastCompany.com for a while now, and had a recent experience that I think exemplifies the degree of backwards thinking that plagues many traditional media companies trying to make the move online. This entire experience was so egregious that I couldn’t help share it with the world because it’s hard to believe that what is a relatively good publication could get it so wrong.

Let’s walk through this step-by-step (with color commentary along the way).

If you'd like to follow along on your own, you should be able to use the original RSS link I clicked on.

Scene 1: The RSS Teaser



Earlier today, in my RSS reader (OnFolio), the following article from FastCompany.com draws me in:

Fast Company Now — "Sleepless nights, a staff of three to do the work of 20, and the doubters -- will all test your will to survive the start-up game. I suppose if it were easy, every person with a brain would be doing...

Along with the title, this is all that shows up in my RSS reader. I think this is a mistake. Robert Scoble has already done a great job describing why you should have a full-text RSS feed, so I’m not going to belabor the point here. If this were the end of it, we wouldn’t have much of an article here. But, the fun is just beginning.

Scene 2: Skipping Through The First Ad



Ok, so the fact that the article is about start-ups brands gets my attention, so I decide to click through (and, please don’t use this as an example of “see, it works!”, or I’ll be forced to scoff in your general direction). The very next page I get (after clicking on the article title in my RSS reader) is…not the content of the article…but, a full page of ads with a “go on to the article” link. Now, I don’t know about you, but if I were an advertiser, this is some of the worst possible placement of ads that could ever be. Do you really want your brand to be remembered for irritating it’s target audience? In any case, lets forget about the advertisers for a second, does FastCompany.com really think that it’s going to build a readership by first not giving me what I want (the article content in my RSS reader) and then blasting me with a set of ads before I actually see anything remotely useful? Once again, it’s not quite over yet. The fun continues…

Scene 3:  Where's The Article?

Ok, I figure, now I’m finally going to get to see the content that I originally was interested in (though my distracted brain has already forgotten why I clicked into the article in the first place). Of course, now I would finally be satisfied and get what I was looking for, right? Not so fast. On the ensuing page, less than 5% of the screen real estate is used to actually give me any content. The rest of the page is all advertising. The screenshot below shows a part of the page (there’s a lot below the fold) with a red rectangle around the actual article summary.
Basically, I don’t have much more content that the initial summary that was in the RSS feed teaser. Interestingly, this page actually shows up as somewhat of a blog article with the typical comment area below the above summary (though I’m not sure how I’m expected to leave a comment as I have not read the article yet). I click the [Read More] link. The adventure continues…



Scene 4: Still No Article! 

Now, it is becoming a bit humorous. Surely now I’d be able to see the full content of the originally promised article, right? Right? Nope. I kid you not, we’re still not there yet. The next page still uses less than 10% of the page real-estate to show me any useful content (and once again, the rest is advertising). Screenshot below shows the page with the content hi-lighted in the red box. All I get this time are two more paragraphs that lead into the article with a [Continue Reading] link at the end. At this point, the whole experience is like watching a really, really bad movie. You know you should stop. But you just can’t help yourself because you really need to know just how bad it is and to validate it for yourself. So, you keep watching the movie… And likewise, I just had to click the [Continue Reading] link…



Scene 5: Finally! The Full Article!

Now, finally, I get the full article. Was it worth it? Not really, but that’s not the point of this diatribe. Let’s assume for a second that the content was simply brilliant. Lets say that there were over 40 advertising “impressions” generated as a result of this experience (which is true). Would FastCompany have been better off getting just me to look at those 40 ads, or reduce the number of clicks (and the number of ads) and increase the likelihood that I’d actually forward the article around? I’m going to argue that online content is all about sharing and getting your readers to attract more readers. Before we close out this scene, I have to add one additional point. When I do finally get to read the full article, you’d think I’d now have the ability to comment on it, right? Wrong. Unlike Scene 3 where there was a comment area under the non-article (i.e. partial article content), there is no comment area on this page. What I do have is a link with the text [Join the discussion]. Ok, to make the adventure complete, I decide I’ll go ahead and “join the discussion”. What happens?

Scene 6: Joining The Discussion

What I expected was a list of prior comments to the article with the ability to add my own thoughts (assuming of course, that I’d make it this far). Instead, the page I arrive on is basically a list of topics in a discussion forum area. None of the topics matches the article I was just reading (i.e. the discussion forum is independent of the actual articles). There are four topics shown on the page with a total of 6 posts. Not burning up the wires with user commentary, are they? Am I surprised? Nope.

Well, that’s it. I feel much better now having shared this with you. What are your thoughts? Am I being overly critical here? Is this simply a matter of a magazine trying to make money on advertising? Or, like me, do you think this kind of behavior is what is causing most of the traditional media companies to lose readership? Would love to hear your thoughts on the comments. And, if you’re one of the 600+ people reading this article through our full-text RSS feed, please click through and share your thoughts. I promise not to insult your intelligence by making it overly difficult for you to share your thoughts.

Comments

Posted by Dharmesh Shah on Mon, Dec 18, 2006 @ 09:56 AM