No RSS? No downloads? No interaction? Fake content? You're fired!

Scoble went on a bit of a tirade yesterday, railing on someone at Microsoft for making some apparently inexcusable mistakes. His objections are pretty clear, so here's what I'm getting from this ... there is clearly some problem between what the intent of the site in question is (some think that it's a site promoting MSN Search), and what the requirements for said site should be. Scoble's point is clear: "You should be fired if you do a marketing site without an RSS feed."

Here's the thing. RSS is supposed to be for dynamic, changing content, stuff that gets updated regularly. Why would I make an RSS feed for a site if the content is not going to change? Just to make the blogosphere aware of it? I think that would backfire, and FAST ... because the second that they realize that the site isn't being updated, it'll fall off the radar. I'm not saying that RSS is only for geeks, which Scoble seems to think is the reason more people don't implement RSS, but that there is a reason to use RSS, and to "get noticed" isn't the best one. Quite frankly, Scoble thinks every site should have RSS. I'm not sure that's the right answer. Being an effective website means knowing what tools are available to you, choosing the right tools, and using them effectively.

Now admittedly, the guy came to Scoble asking why the site wasn't being linked to. That's a whole different problem ... I'm not sure that a site like that is supposed to get linked to. Then again, looking at the site, it's hard to tell what it's intent is. That right there is the entire problem ... the site can't decide what it's supposed to be. If you wanted to create a site that would grab people's attention and get them talking about it in their blogs, then yes, this guy should be fired. But I think Scoble was off-base on including RSS in his argument.

I'm not a fan of fake content either, but I'm not too sure that promoting MSN Search is possible with "real content", unless you'd just have a page that was a rolling list of search terms like I saw in the Google office when I was there. I'm not sure that a site like this should have any interaction, either, because all the interaction the site should have is getting people to use MSN Search, but a marketing site isn't going to convince them to do that ... better results than Google will. No downloads is also missing the point ... what download would highlight what's great about MSN Search?

As a web developer and consultant, the answer here is very clear. This web site completely fails to do what it was intending to do, if the intent was to get people to link to it. Is it the designer's job? I don't think so. I think the failure here is on the marketing side, for thinking that this would be an effective way to get people on the internet to use the service. Why? Because they're already on the internet ... wouldn't it be more effective to just get them to the damned search window?

Here is what my proposal would be: Those MSN Search commercials are pretty effective. Launch a few "viral" (I hate that term, but whatever) URLs that each contain that commercial, and when the commercial is done playing, they're left with a no frills Search bar. Not the one on the current Search site, which is just ugly ... I'm talking about the one used in the commercial itself. Just a text entry box and the Search button. Let them create their own content for your marketing campaign. That creates a personal connection to your service and the individual.

The trick here is how to get these URLs spread around, but I'd have to think that getting them into Google search results would be the answer. Then, you're back to the whole "getting people to link to the site" issue, but I think that this would probably get the job done better than a "fake" marketing site. So Scoble ends up being right on this one, but not for the right reasons. :)