Vipa Solutions

Phone books.  Today we received three at the office and everyone probably got one on their front porch steps as well.  It may be a generational thing, but I found myself asking what these thick and confusing wastes of paper were for.  By poll of the office, I found that 90 percent of the population never really uses these things. Then I thought,  "these are free, so who ponied up the cash to pay for these puppies?"  Businesses, obviously.  I am writing today to tell you why phone books are completely useless for anything else but for businesses literally throwing money away and as booster chairs for small children.  Instead of paying cash for an ad that sits soggily on my front porch step for the next 6 months or collecting dust in/on (insert place where you keep your junk) those companies could be investing in a new website. 

Here's why- The majority of people who have grown up in the digital age that want to look up a phone number, an address, or maybe a place where they can order pizza delivery from will open their trusty old laptop and find a map on Google or MapQuest.  If out and about, they may turn on their phone and look up the nearest movie theatre and voila! The movies times are also right at their fingertips. No longer will they have to call and wait to hear the automated voice speak all of the movie times.  I hope you are getting the point. 

I'm not one for math, but I would assume that there are thousands of phone books made and they probably cost a lot to run an ad in.  But, is that ad interactive? Does it have a place for them to compare prices with ten other businesses or a design that is inticing? No, but a website does.

It's all over the press, unfriend, as you may have heard, is the Oxford Dictionary's WOTY (Word of the Year). Definition is as follows:

Unfriend: To remove someone as a ‘friend’ on a social networking site such as Facebook.

Other techy words like paywall and freemium were considered but were, unfriended from the list after further deliberation.

My question to pose is, who comes up with these words? They must have a lot of time on their hands. To me, the word unfriend is like "sexting", "freakonomics" and dare I say, "Brangelina" all of which are, at first slightly creative, but mostly just egregious and oversimplified juxtapositions to the English language, not to mention in this blogger's opinion, overused. Nevertheless, the language goes where the people take it, so it is quite possible that we can expect more social media and pop culture jargon in our lives and in the work place.

Unfriend is not a bad word, per-se, the idea of social media jargon is a wonderful thought. The fact that they chose social media jargon as the one and only Word of the Year shows just how powerful the device is becoming in our society. Social media, at some point in the last 10 years was nonexistent and now look at it, even my parents (commonly known as technologically inept (sorry!)) are using it. Use this news quip as an example for your webventures, don't unfriend social media because it seems too frivolous or casual, instead update your status as a website by making it interesting, dynamic, and accessible to all kinds of people.

<JE

Post Away: Have any web technology words (or words you made up) you think should make our list of Vipa word of the year? Post away below!