Dopp Juice Archive

I’ll strategize it, architect it, and design it.  I’ll help market it.  I’ll direct the team that’s assembling it.  I’ll even tweak the engine and apply the paint job if we’re short on staff.  But if doing all this also makes me responsible for changing its oil every three thousand miles and providing roadside assistance when it has a flat tire, then suddenly I stop being good at my job.

Websites are like cars. I’ve used the metaphor and I’ve heard it from others as well.  Even the prices are comparable — do you want a $500 clunker?  Something that’s either reliable or sexy (but probably not both) for $5000?  Or are you putting down 25 grand for your new baby?

We’ve got website mass-manufacturers. Website mom-and-pop mechanics.  Website fuel (hosting?).  We sell services that make your website stand out in a crowd.  We even give them vanity plates with the special character “.com” on them, and hand out free bling for your sidebars.  Let’s keep going with this.

Where are the Jiffy Lubes?  Where are the reliable, bonded, high-profile, maintenance shops that you can feel confident handing your hosting passwords to every six months or so for a good, honest, and slightly-overpriced assessment of how things look under the hood?  They should be able to upgrade things like WordPress, edit that homepage content you only care to change every once in awhile, advise you about any larger issues, apply some Spam Guard, and send you on your way before dinnertime.

And while we’re at it, where are the website loans for new businesses?  And where is the website insurance against hacking, hosting failure, and freeway Digg collisions?  How can you upgrade the sound system that is your website copy?  Where can you get all that bird shit washed off your outside user-generated content surface?  Where can you have your server space vacuumed?  How are you supposed to know when it’s time to get your timing belt replaced? Where are you supposed to go to do that?  And how can we hold mechanics reliable for doing what we ask without ripping us off?  (I suppose that last problem still hasn’t been solved with cars, so maybe I’m asking too much.)

I hate watching people’s transmissions die after driving 100,000 miles without a tuneup.  And I’m even less fond of being handed that panicked problem while I’m right in the middle of designing a beautiful new car.   But I don’t blame them for it — they don’t have much of a choice.  The resources aren’t out there on the side of the road, reminding them to come in for a checkup.  Where’s the freaking Jiffy Lube?

If it’s getting to the point where “married couple” is just another way of saying, “two-website household,” it’s time to scale the industry to address the needs of consumers.  Too many people assume that whoever built a website is going to be responsible for it forever — even if there’s no maintenance retainer plan in the contract.  And true, we — as web developers — created that assumption because we wanted to hold on to our clients.  But how many unloved, unmaintained websites are out there now, rusting and creating an eye sore on someone’s front yard because “maintenance” was an assumption instead of a plan?  Drop your pride and get real for a second.  You’re not happy about it but you don’t want to do the work to fix the situation, do you.

I no longer work on projects where the “designer” and the “programmer” are the same person.  I find that — even if someone can do both — their work will be much better if they only have to do one.  Having two separate bodies engaged in that arm-wrestling match makes for a better website.  And a less crazy team.  Even though I used to try to do both of them myself.

I’m adding maintenance to the pile now.  I don’t think the manufacturers should be the maintainers.  I think it’s a conflict of interest, a disservice to the consumer, and a white lie that’s tainted with an extra layer of fear and pride.

It’s time for the Jiffy Lubes to start popping up on the suburban street corners of the Internet.  We’re ready now.  And please, do it well.

photo credits: “jiffy lube” by joe dunckley and “rusty car storage” by dave_7 — thanks, guys!

Twitter is addictive for a lot of reasons.

• You can do it from your cell phone.
• You’re required to be brief (140 characters max).
• You can stay aware of what’s going on in lots of peoples’ lives with very little time investment.
• You can customize your experience by using 3rd party apps that meet your quirky specific needs.

Email, on the other hand, isn’t impressing me so much these days. Why? Because its etiquette is outdated. The following behaviors are still considered rude in the land of email:

• Not responding
• Taking more than 24 hours to respond
• Expecting an immediate response
• Not responding to every point in an email
• Responding to a long email with a very brief email
• Not including friendly small talk at the beginning and end of a message

Email is still trying to be a cross between phone calls and handwritten letters, and we don’t need that anymore. We need to replace Email Culture with a new set of tools and etiquette that helps us convey information and strengthen relationships in less time.

Twitter is showing us how it’s done, other social networking websites aren’t far behind, and SMS text messaging has exploded like a pack of Mentos in a bottle of Diet Coke. We’re craving lightweight communication and embracing it however we can. But there’s one lingering problem: Email is still our default form of communication. I might favor Twitter above all else, but I can only use Twitter to talk to other Twitter users. Email, on the other hand, is still the center of everyone’s universe.

So that’s why I’m calling you out, Email. It’s time to change.

• We want email clients that visually cue us to write shorter messages.
• We want really short emails to show up our cell phones as text messages.
• We want threaded message views that take Gmail’s interface a step further and look like iChat.
• We want the same freedom and flexibility that we’ve always had with email, but with tools that reward us for being brief.
• We want long messages to be special again.
• We want guilt-free communication.
• We want to be able to respond to more quickly, and therefore, to respond more.

What’s it gonna take to make this happen?

As promised, I hit the Engage.com-sponsored Love 2.0 party last night and asserted my peaceful protests about their website’s rigid category structure. I met the CEO, the Project Manager, the Front End Developer, and the Art Director. They were all very friendly and tolerant toward the tall queer trouble-maker in the black wig, and I was impressed with how amenable they were to my concerns about their dating service.

The question was: Why can’t I be bisexual on your website?

The answers were along these lines (with my reactions in italics)…

• That was a database decision. We made it possible for you to be straight or gay, but bisexuality requires searching the entire database, and that’s a big load on the servers.
  • Good news! Enterprise-level databases and servers are capable of handling full searches now! Really…
• You can! You’re free to switch back and forth! You can be one way one week and another the next!
  • That’s great that you allow people to be fluid about their identities (really, that’s important, and i’m glad you’re doing it). But I’m not excited about dividing my time into “straight weeks” and “gay weeks.” I want to represent myself on your site consistently and honestly, and not have to make a decision on which group of people is allowed to court me at a time.
• We thought about it, and we’d still like to do it, but it’s just going to require so much code to make it work. It’s very complicated.
  • I hear ya. It’s hard. That’s rough. I believe in you, though. You can do whatever you want to do. You have the tools.
• It’s a matter of release dates and product management. We’ve got so much going on, and we’re working on making the site better all the time. We just haven’t been able to get that piece in place.
  • I totally understand. I’m a project manager myself. I know this stuff gets messy. You can’t get it all done at once. So… are you working on it?
    
• I agree, it’s important, and we want to be the kind of site that welcomes everybody. We should have that done by the end of the year, and we hope you’ll come back when the site is more open.
  • Fantastic! Thanks! I’ll keep an eye out for the changes! It’s been great talking to you. I look forward to becoming your biggest fan.
    

Seriously, they’ve been really good about this. I’ve had several follow up email exchanges with the people I met at the party, scheming what an ideal site could function like, and discussing the pros and cons of organizational styles. Their VP also responded to my original email, stating she agrees with my point and that they would do their best to get it right.

I’m excited about Engage because they’re merging new ideas about connections with models people are already comfortable with. By the way they’ve responded to my noise, I can tell they sincerely care about making their community happy. They’ve just got some growing to do.