Demystifying “Above the fold” online

I just ran across this post on the Fluidesign Blog which tackles the ever-contensious idea of a “fold” in online marketing. The author cites several common marketing misconceptions when it comes to the idea of an online fold. It’s well worth a good read for anyone who touches the space of marketing online:

The pleasure of recognition and the promise of meaning. | Fluidesign Blog blog archive | Demystifying “Above the Fold”

Myth: Try to get all the content “above the fold”:Why it’s not true: In the beginning days of the web, we thought we had to fit all the content on 1 page, all above the fold. The problem was everything got squished, ugly, and very hard to read. So instead of trying to get all content on 1 web page, people were smart enough to create multiple web pages, i.e. a website! During this time, we also learned that is was pretty damn annoying to have to load a new page to get to new content, so pages got longer, people began to really love scroll bars, and then AJAX was invented. Thus websites now look and work a lot better than they did in the 90’s!

South by Southwest Interactive is coming up

You don’t know what SXSWi is? Maybe you think it’s the famous music festival? You weren’t aware there was an amazing Interactive Festival before all that other cool stuff? Maybe you should watch this

ZeFrank explains SWSXi in under a minute

I’m going to be headed out to Austin next week to take part in my very first SXSW and I couldn’t be more excited. I’ve wanted to attend both the interactive and music portions of the festival for a few years now. This year I’ll only be able to make it out for the interactive stuff, but that’s good enough for a first run.

I posted on my personal blog a few weeks back which sessions I was most interested in attending and I thought I’d repost those here:

• Saturday
  • AJAX and Flash Mistakes (Jonathan Boutelle)
  • 10 Things We’ve Learned at 37signals (Jason Fried)
  • Go For IT! Attracting Girls to Technology (Claire Richardson)
  • Quit Your Day Job and Vlog (Tim Shey)
  • The Suxorz: The Worst Ten Social Media Ad Campaigns of 2007 (Henry Copeland)
  • The Weird Turn Pro: Crowdsourcing For Creatives (Derek Powazek)
  • Worst Website Ever: That’s So Crazy, It Just Might Work (Andy Baio)
• Sunday
  • A/B Testing: Design Friend or Foe? (Corey Chandler)
  • 10 Tips for Managing a Creative Environment (Bryan Mason)
  • Tools for Enchantment: 20 Ways to Woo Users (Kathy Sierra)
  • Wireframing in a Web 2.0 World (Richard Rutter)
  • Magic and Mental Models: Using Illusion to Simplify Designs (Jared M. Spool)
• Monday
  • A Critical Look At OpenID (Jason Levitt)
  • Building Developer-Friendly Web Service APIs (Ben Vinegar)
  • Self Replicating Awesomeness: The Marketing of No Marketing (Brian Oberkirch)
  • The Web Agency: There Will be Blood (Chris Bernard)
  • What User Generated Video Means to Word of Mouth Advertising (Daphne Kwon)
• Tuesday
  • Considerations for Scalabale Web Ventures (Chris Lea)
  • Creative Collaboration: Building Web Apps Together (Paul Hammond)
  • Secrets of JavaScript Libraries (John Resig)
  • Using Entertainment to Create Effective Mobile Advertising (Adam Zbar)

In addition to all of these excellent panels, there are nearly infinite possibilities for networking, partying, and catching up with old friends who live in the far away world of San Francisco. Here are the best parties as far as I’m concerned. I don’t know if we’ll be able to make all of them, but I sure will try ;)

• Saturday, 6pm-8pm — Google Party
• Saturday, 8pm-11pm — Frog design
• Saturday, 10pm-2am — 16 Bit: SXSWi’s Opening Night Afterparty (Joyent, Pownce, Digg, Laughing Squid, Catster/Dogster, et cetera)
• Sunday, 6pm-7pm — Pre-awards party
• Sunday, 7:30pm — Web awards
• Sunday, 9pm — People powered party (Etsy, Threadless, Timbuk2, Moo)
• Monday, 7pm-10pm – The great british booze-up
• Monday, 8pm-Midnight — Next New Networks, “Hey! Ho! Lets go!” Rock band party!

SXSW is also a time during the year when new startups and big companies alike launch big products. Last year’s festival marked the huge explosion in the use of Twitter, a little company you may have heard of by now. In a post over on ReadWriteWeb, Marshall Kirkpatrick is taking bets on what new product will be the breakout hit of 2008:

A winning app has to be easy for lots of people to use and has to provide clear value to conference and party-goers. It might seem valuable only at SXSW but end up proving itself afterwords due the scale achieved in Austin… [B]uzz momentum leading up to the event is also very important. If a good number of savvy web lovers have just become power users of an app before SXSW, it stands a great chance of reaching critical mass there.

Marshall goes through a list of new products that have popped up over the past year and gives their pros and cons. Pownce might’ve had a good shot if they hadn’t just released a full API so late in the game.

FriendFeed is another good bet. Powered by a clever bunch of x-googlers, they’ve produced a product that has the makings of something interesting. It still hasn’t gelled with me as something I need to check everyday like Twitter. I suspect that this is mostly a design issue though; the current display of information is basically an overload and I find it personally very had to scan through.

Check out my page on FriendFeed.If you’re going to SWSX and want to meet up with me, shoot me an email at cecker@stoneward.com and we’ll work it out!