These days, Reader is helping me find a balance that contains both ‘interesting’ and ‘popular’ content. I came upon a very interesting post on Reader via Mahendra Palsule, which was one exactly this topic – Would you rather be Interesting OR Popular by Justin Kownacki.
For the purpose of this post,
Interesting: Arousing or holding attention
Popular: Regarded with favour/approval by general public
To briefly summarise, Justin sees a clear dichotomy in ‘interesting’ and ‘popular’, and states that when something becomes popular, “it will simultaneously cease to be interesting.” The reason, and I would more or less agree to it basis my experiences, is that when it becomes popular, my relationship with the ‘interesting’ entity changes. Suddenly, it is an interest that has moved from a relatively private territory to a more public one. Like Justin notes, it creates dissonance with my self perception of being an interesting person. Meanwhile, money also has a role to play. “interesting sells, but popular sells a lot“, for various reasons.
Meanwhile, like many many others, I subscribe to the uber popular (and interesting) Seth Godin, and on the same day, he wrote a post titled ” Driveby culture and the endless search for wow“. I felt that they were related, especially when Godin writes about the creation and consumption of culture.
As the comments in Justin’s post indicate, there are entities which have successfully been both interesting and popular, but I’d say they are exceptions. I’ve always believed in ‘interesting’ (against ‘popular’) over a larger time frame, and if I go by Godin’s last paragraph in the post, I think he is on that side too. Which is why, I wonder with the massive changes that social platforms bring to creation and consumption of content, brands will have to choose between interesting and popular.
To generalise, the era of mass media made ‘popular’ easy for brands. Like Godin says, money could buy an audience. And that’s exactly what happened when there was scarcity of content. The audience had, and paid, attention. A percentage consumed the brand, sales went up, more money bought more attention. The message also often pandered to the lowest common denominator. Brands didn’t have to be interesting until they operated in the commodity space, and then it became a gimmick.
When I started using the platforms of what is labeled as social media, I thought there was something that could change this cycle. I still do, in spite of this post (most of it justified, by the way) by Steve Hodson. I think what we’re seeing now is brands seeing social as just another media, and going the ‘popular’ way. The majority of the audience too, is discovering popularity, and would like to have a share of that themselves. So their consumption and creation would be on that front. In a way, for now, one set of media is being replaced by personal brands. But in spite of that, the basics of social platforms create opportunities for those brands with ‘interesting’ as their way to be, to have their say. While examples are few and far in between now, I think its just the learning curve taking its time. Maybe the examples are not so easily available precisely they are only interesting to a smaller audience set of users now. Maybe there never will be, because it IS difficult for popular and interesting to go hand in hand. 🙂
I think ‘popular’ is going to be even more difficult to sustain, and not just in terms of communication, but organisational culture, scalability and so on. As content becomes even more abundant, and as technology permeates the lion’s share of our daily interactions, I think the audience will swing towards ‘interesting’, because in it, I sense, is freedom, and opportunity. And that goes for brands too. However, it remains, as always, a matter of intent, and though I feel that it is indeed a question of ‘interesting’ vs ‘popular’, in the medium term, both kinds of brands will co exist.
until next time, popularity chats in the comments then? 🙂
P.S: Do you think Apple is interesting trying to be popular?
So do you believe that the ‘popular’ will have to keep reinventing itself as ‘Interesting’ to maintain it’s popularity in a dog catching tail kind of scenario.
even if it does, i wonder if ‘popular’ can appeal to the guys who like ‘interesting’.. for now, i see a dichotomy..
but thanks to your question, i begin to also see advertising as a tool that brands (in a commodity category) use to try and show themselves as interesting… is that why a lot of advertising doesn’t seem to be working now?
Because Internet distribution now makes it very easy to be interesting *once*, anybody can become a “one-hit wonder” because everybody has at least one good idea and (now) the means to share that idea with the world.
As such, I think the concept of sustained popularity has become much more difficult because there are exponentially more stimuli vying for your attention today than there were 20 or 30 years ago. We’ll probably have more one-hit wonders, but far fewer long-term successes because the attention competition is that much harder.
Which makes me wonder… will we someday reach a point where the public voluntarily requests LESS stimuli? Or, put another way, would YouTube be more successful if it LIMITED the amount of information people could upload every day?
Food for thought…
By nature man shows interest in the special things and the same continues in any of the selections u take. that’s what is the brand name all about-When anything interesting becomes popular..it looses the important ingredient-specialty(because of various reasons). To address this, companies always strive to bring in the new variants of the same species/altered species with the cosmetic changes.which actually is false specialty(Hence d interest).
Justin: i think the demand for filters and ‘curation’ is precisely a trend in the direction you’ve stated – less, but subjectively relevant content. thanks for dropping in 🙂
prakash: like i said, there are exceptions. agree on the variants though. it is , like advertising, an attempt to stand out at least in the short term..
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