Jakob Nielsen points to the emerging relevance of dedicated search feeds, and, as I personally interpret this, of the highly specific and targeted newsfeeds. He says in one of his latest Alertbox columns:

"...the Web's strength comes from narrowly targeted sites that provide users with highly specialized information that they need or care about passionately.

It was also clear that search was a hugely important general-interest service, because even back when the Web had only 30,000 sites, locating specialized ones was nearly impossible without help.

The website is becoming a less prominent locus of experience as people use search engines to bring up answers to their current questions.

How can sites cope with masses of freeloaders?"

My answer:

By using Web sites as extended online archives and rich media libraries of content to be consulted for in-depth research.

By gradually shifting toward providing topic-specific newsfeeds to readers built around the effective aggregation and filtering of fresh content, news, search results and other relevant online and offline INFORMATION.

Jakob Nielsen points to a good set of useful actions publishers can take in the effort to counterbalance users increased attention with simple and direct answers to their questions. These include:

• Realize that unique visitors are an irrelevant statistic.
• Offer fly-trap content.
I call this mini-guides and mini-dossiers and I must truly testify that they work wonders.
• Such content attracts users by providing narrowly focused pages that provide clear answers to common problems.
• Embellish the answer with rich "see also" links to related content and services.
• Go beyond pure information and provide analysis and insight.
• Publish a newsletter with additional tips and useful information.

Absolutely great advice.

Jakob Nielsen - [ Read more ]