Myten om interaktivitet

Af Helle Nissen Kruuse, hnk@djh.dk

• Nedslående tal
• Mangel på en politik

Den højt besungne interaktivitet får et ordentligt fur i den respekterede irske netanalytiker Gerry McGoverns ugebrev New Thinking 18. marts. Interaktivitet starter, skriver han, med formulering af en politik om, hvor hurtigt man skal svare på modtagne emails, og han giver et par nedslående eksempler.

Nyhedsbrevet hedder 'Myten om det interaktive internet', og McGovern kalder interaktivitet noget af et dogme på nettet. Vi er igen og igen blevet fortalt, at dét, der gør nettet til noget særligt, er interaktivitet.

»However, interactivity on the Internet is often vastly over-hyped. Words like 'interactivity' and 'community' have been hugely abused and devalued over the last eight years. Nobody would call a group of people in a nightclub a community. However, to some, all you have to do is set up a discussion forum and you have an online community.«

I virkelighedens verden svigter den mest elementære interaktivitet på nettet, nemlig noget så simpelt som at besvare emails.

Nedslående tal

McGovern fortæller om en undersøgelse foretaget i december 2001 af en journalist på New York Times, som sendte en email til 65 amerikanske senatorer. Hun fortalte dem, at hun var ved at skrive en artikel om kongresmedlemmernes håndtering af emails. Men:

• 31 svarede overhovedet ikke
• 27 svarede med automat-svar
• 7 i alt svarede inden for to uger

Et af svarene, fra senator Phil Gramm's kontor, lød: »The communication that Sen. Gramm values most certainly does not arrive by wire.«

McGovern refererer også til en rapport fra Jupiter Media Metrix, der undersøgte interaktiviteten på 250 detilhandels-netsteder. Resultatet offentliggjort i januar i år afslører en lige så massiv mangel på interaktivitet.

• 30 pct svarede inden for 6 timer
• 18 pct brugte 6-24 timer
• 18 pct 1-3 dage
• 34 pct tog over tre dage eller svarede overhovedet ikke.

Mangel på en politik

»It is still surprising the amount of people who believe that installing some chat or discussion board software will create an online community for their website. The software is only 1 percent of the job. The real work involves getting people to interact,« noterer McGovern og tilføjer:

»Online communities are very often more like clubs, associations or gangs, than genuine communities. Properly focused, they can contribute to social bonding and/or aid in the sharing of knowledge.

However, they often are a monumental waste of time. Many advertisers have shied away from such 'community' environments because they tend to contain people with too much time on their hands and too little money in their pockets.

We need to take a more realistic view of what interactivity and community means on the Web. Interactivity starts with having a policy in relation to how quickly you are going to respond to emails you receive. If you don't have that then your online community has about as much substance as a group of strangers in a nightclub.«