Analyzing Jeff Atwood's Blog Post

Analyzing Blog Post – Sarah Cousineau - January, 13^th 2019

            Jeff Atwood’s article is written with simple language and is easy to understand. This is an indicator his audience seem to be moderately educated and likely middle-class working people. With the easy access and low-cost of Internet, online articles can now reach most individual in the community. The author’s audience is probably between 18-40 years old. This age group is familiar with the media and usually comfortable surfing the web, reading blog posts and commenting.

            The introduction of Atwood’s piece was confusing. It did not draw me in as it was unclear what the author meant by the “number next to your name”. The author is trying to demonstrate people should spend more time listening (reading) as opposed to talking. He used the Ars Banana Experiment and the Slate Experiment to prove his point. Results show most people only read 50% of an article before commenting or simply moving along. The experiments are relevant and support his point well.  

            Atwood’s solution is to value listening as much as talking within the community. He says it would promote better conversations. He proposed four solutions. First, he recommended removing interruption while reading, such as pagination. That way, online articles would be a better flow. Second, he suggested measuring and displaying read times. This way, your worth would be evaluated and taken into consideration when engaging with the article’s authors. Third, he proposed a reward system such as giving a badge after reading a 100+ post topic. Fourth, Atwood emphasized on the importance of updating in real time. He explained it would encourage conversations to stay lively and engaging.

            Atwood’s piece introduction needs to be rewritten in a different way. A few simple and descriptive sentences would make for a smoother introduction, instead of an image and bullet points. On the other hand, his article is well supported with the two experiments described earlier. They helped prove his point as the results were surprising and in correlation with it. Furthermore, the images in his article add a strong and appealing visual. Lastly, his solutions are creative and would be worth a shot.