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duncehat.pngJakob Nielsen has been around as a usability “guru”since the early days of the Web. I used to read his Alertbox columns religiously and he always used to have great insights on how to improve websites. I’ve interviewed Nielsen, had lunch with him, and read his book.
But now that he’s calling Web 2.0 dangerous to business and that saying that “on the Web, most people are bozos and not worth listening to,” I have to agree with my friend Adriana Lukas eponymous evaluation that Nielsen’s turning into “an old fart who’s right about usability but not much else, with the syndrome ‘doesn’t understand the Web’.”
After railing about the uselessness of social media,etc, etc. Nielsen concludes that incorporating “a modest 2.0 infusion can be beneficial.” And he points out – bingo – that “before throwing spending money at “2.0” features, make sure that you have all the “1.0” requirements working to perfection.” That last sentence, you see, is why I still read the guy.
But his post seems like a thinly disguised scheme to get bloggers to link to him (like I’m doing) and link bait for Digg and TechMeme because most people won’t read past the outrageous proclamations. And that’s a cheap trick Mr Nielsen, that’s already back-fired on you by hurting your reputation.