TrendWatching’s Reinier Evers popped by the PSFK office for a nice cup of tea on Friday afternoon. Evers was in NYC after delivering a very good TW presentation on Thursday and it was nice of him to drop by to chat (btw: the whole trend community seems very open and friendly – Bill, the Cool Hunter, popped by earlier on Friday too).
Anyway, one thing that Evers talked about was the vast amount of trend information being produced – how could a regular trend watcher cope? He joked that if PSFK increased the volume of posts per day to over 10, that he’d have to take us off his RSS list as he would feel too swamped!
It’s a very interesting discussion point, and I’d love some feedback from you through the ‘Comments’ box. For something to react to, consider these future strategies for PSFK:
a) PSFK does a Godin – makes occasional high-and-mighty commentary on trend subjects – and therefore becomes a popular site.
b) PSFK does a Boing Boing – makes very frequent posts about anything and everything trend related – and therefore becomes a popular site.
c) We create RSS feeds by category allowing poor ‘regular trend watchers’ to get headlines by their preferred subject area.
d) erm, your call.
Thanks, P.
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How about, PSFK does a [I think it's new actually] and is disarmingly honest about its choices of possible direction?! Could catch on..!
Nice site, just discovered, will be RSS-ing and checking back.
November 14th, 2005 at 12:29 pm
Complex questions for a little comments box.
One thing I consistently hear is how people like the random all over the map nature of PSFK. I think we echo and embody our audience in that we experience the world as a whole and as we find it.
So, in direct response to a,b,and c my vote is YES. Go where inspiration and our feet carry us and find a way to package it so we don’t overwhelm our audience. We do our typical PSFK “anything and everything” with liberal amounts of “high-and-mighty” thrown in and maybe make a few RSS feeds that follow a simplified set of our categories.
November 14th, 2005 at 1:44 pm
Hm, isn’t that a problem every newsprovider like papers or news agencies have to cope with, too? I don’t see the problem really about too many posts popping up in an RSS feed. We’re talking internet and blogging, not your usual morningpaper.
I find PSFK posts interesting enough to take maybe at least 30mins a day to browse through and check.
However it’s always good to edit the selection of articles on PSFK, which I think you already do.
What else can you do? I can’t imagine a ranking system or something like “was this trendarticle helpful for you?”
However it would be nice to sort of have your daily newsflash and maybe weekly topics (like customization) that go a little bit more in depth than the newsflash. (ooh same concept as newspapers!)
So my resumee is a nice mix between Boing Boing, Godin and maybe something else.
Greez
M
November 14th, 2005 at 2:11 pm
a mix between Boing Boing and Godin
November 14th, 2005 at 3:29 pm
Very good points from you all. Anyone else?
P
November 14th, 2005 at 3:33 pm
somewhere between a) and b) would be good if you had to do anything. i trust that you don’t get TOO high and mighty, but then i also trust that you won’t post everything under the sun.
that’s not really saying much, is it. bah! why change, y’all are doing a great job as is.
November 14th, 2005 at 4:13 pm
I want to echo the last post and say why change a winning formula – why follow when you can lead.
I think PSFK has got it just right and due to the participatory nature of the ‘entourage’, one day it’s a couple of posts and the next it’s 10 or so… that’s nature and don’t fight it!
Although, our friend Reinier does have a point – my RSS feeds is topping a 100 and it’s the ‘heavy-bloggers’ with a wide aim that gets the chop first!
November 14th, 2005 at 6:05 pm
Yes. I agree with the last two comment as well. Longer pieces often lose my attention and I’m already scrolling down. I like the byte-sized morsels PSFK is known for!
November 14th, 2005 at 8:05 pm
Hard to say I have to admit!
Maybe split the blog into quick access/in depth articles because I think that reflects the two PSFK user styles best.
It really depends on how much time you have. sometimes you have time to click through all the news yourself, sometimes its kewl when you can just briefly skip through articles.
So a good tool could be some MyYahoo-Style personalization of the blog where you can select the diversity and detail of the news.
Greez,
M
November 15th, 2005 at 4:32 am