On Content Updates…

I get annoyed with websites that don’t have a way to get notifications. I’ll find something I think I’ll like in the future, but I have no way to keep it at the front of my brain. I’m likely to forget about it.

For example, I found a website this weekend called BookPecker. Weird name, but it summarizes books in five bullet points. I love to read, so this wouldn’t substitute for the actual book, but it would give me an idea of what a book was about and if I might want to buy it.

Near as I can tell, the site expects you to visit it just to see what’s new. But this is an unknown unknown – I can’t know if there’s a reason to visit (a new book was posted), so I don’t visit …and therefore I don’t know.

(And, for BookPecker in particular, there doesn’t seem to be a “What’s New” section anyway, but that’s another usability issue entirely…)

For these websites, I created a bookmark folder called “Revisit.” Every once in a while, I browse through that folder and go visit sites that may or may not be updated. But this is annoying and inefficient. Why haven’t we settled on a common “site update notification” standard?

Well, of course, we had RSS, but Google kind of murdered that when it killed Google Reader. It still exists, and I still use it, but fewer and fewer sites implement it.

There’s social media, but a site owner would have to saturate all the options: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, BlueSky, Mastodon, etc. (And BookPecker doesn’t seem to have any social media accounts linked from anywhere. If they’re there, I can’t find them.)

There’s email, but people are hesitant to give out their email addresses. (Though, I do for resources that are important to me.)

And I know there are services for detecting site updates, but these are imperfect because no one updates the same way.

Now, don’t get me wrong – I don’t want free content. I just want some notification that says, “Hey, all this new stuff was added. Come check it out.” I’ll gladly visit your site and participate in your business model. Just let me know that there’s a new reason to do so.

This feels like a problem we should have solved by now. Until then, I guess I’ll just add BookPecker to my “Revisit” folder…

(Also, maybe read about the Spring ‘83 protocol. I like it, but it’s got a long way until it hits critical mass.)