Around 10 years ago I was able to attend a seminar locally given by Gerry McGovern about effective web content and site architecture that was very informative and to this day still impacts how I look to structure websites for clients when I sit down to design them. Since then I’ve subscribed to Gerry’s email newsletter which focuses primarily on marketing, strategy and best practices with a particular emphasis on the Web.
I always find it informative and entertaining. I specifically enjoy his ‘rantiness’ in some cases and his complete lack of hesitation to call out anyone he thinks is guilty of either foul play or could be doing something better. I consistently find something useful to take away. His missives are succinct, well-written and easy to read – and aren’t bogged down with a bunch of technical terms, making them interesting to even those not immediately in the marketing industry.
Today’s edition hit my inbox and I find it right on point. Stuff to think about for Regular Joes/Janes here as well as marketing and web industry-types.
“FANG stands for Facebook, Amazon, Netflix,…FANG is sucking up all the data into which it can sink its teeth. It’s sifting, organizing, and then presenting that data in often easy-to-digest bites. Often, it’s easier to get an answer from Google than going to the government site that created the data from which the answer is built.”
“The interface is the product. The interface is the service. FANG wants to own the interface for everything. All the boring, necessary, costly stuff that make societies work will still be left to governments. But the public won’t see that effort. They’ll just see the cool FANG interface and wonder why governments can’t be like that.”
Read the full post, ‘FANG is Coming for You’, over on Gerry’s website.