Nobody likes jargon.

Least of all, anyone who does not understand it.

I mentioned this with a fellow usability soul recently and the conversation soon degenerated into a shared rant about the hangover of web design conventions that all too often leave us with websites littered with buttons that say Submit, Reset, and Post.

Well fine if you have become numbed to it over the years using the web and accept it, but for so many people that are light users of the web, do those terms really resonate with what they want to do once they have visit your page?

Are they really clamouring to submit?

Think for a moment how Facebook pays attention to the vernacular of it's calls to actions.

You don't post comments to a blog, you write on a wall.

Facebook tune in to the psychology of users because the subtleties of language have a massive impact.

A recent study by Dan Zarrella, earmarked Don't "Submit" To Landing Page Button Text cogently illustrates the weakness of using the default text for the button by revealing the comparative Click Through efficacy of buttons that did not use the word 'submit'.

The conclusion: submit stinks.

I am an advocate of customer centric thinking and use the mighty Get Satisfaction service for a client.

Get Satisfaction relentlessly position themselves as a customer champion.

Yet even there I notice jargon creep in their widgets with the inclusion of the dreaded word post tucked into their interface.

Jargon is ineffective and exclusionary but it seems that JarGon marches on and still exists in too many places.

This week I shared a room with the finest SEO minds in town and a cow disguised as an elephant.

Yes, I attended the superb Pro Seminar in London.

It was hugely gratifying to experience in person the final session showdown between Rand Fishkin and Will Critchlow as they intellectually bludgeoned us with their SEO brilliance, goading the audience to up their game in pursuit of excellence.

You can view a clip of the final session showdown on SEOMoz.

What you won't see in the rough Ustream clip is the elephant.

The elephant in the room, was infact a cow, and a purple one at that.

In essence Rand and Will coincided in their conclusions and possibly both echoed a sentiment that Seth Godin is infamous for: Be remarkable

Rand actually featured Seth in his slidedeck and although Will did not cite him, his thinking gravitated towards "doing kick ass stuff"...it will bring the links.

Rand talked about owning instead of competing and offered some sparkling examples of brands that had stuck their necks out.

Ownership in branding is a concept espoused by the advertising cognescenti and it remains a genuine way to achieve success, for big and small players.

But is it too much of a slippery subject for Mozzers and SEO pros alike to grapple with as link navel gazing continues to run amok?

Is now the time to take the un out of unmarketing return full circle?

If all the talk of New Twitter and Google Instant is distracting, please spare a thought for Ben.

You see when Mr Maguire led young Ben aside in The Graduate he only wanted to utter a single word.

If Mr Maguire were here today, I'd bet he would say something different:

Filters

Maybe yesterday Mr Maguire would have said: Search.

But the times they are a-changin.

With the advent of services such as DataSift and Formulists we need ever finer filters.

What word do you think Mr Maguire might say today?

Metal detectorist by macaz1977 © Flickr

Do you like to rummage?

Do you like to get to know people not just for what they are saying right now and a just a few days ago, but also for what they said months ago?

Don´t you ever wish you could investigate further back on Twitter more than the seven or so days that their own Search allows.

OK, so you can examine someones timeline on twitter.com but it´s not so easy to rewind.

Sure, you can click on more at the foot of the page. But it´s not all that useful.

You can do the following though:

Add ?page=XXX to the end of the URL of the Twitter user you want to research

http://twitter.com/paulgailey?page=130

Replace XXX for any number you wish.  The higher the number, the older the results that will be returned.

You can use any number up to 160, so the oldest date of the updates will vary depending on the degree of activity of that user.

If you are interested in the timeline of someone you just started to follow, you are sure to dredge up another gem in their timeline.

Mine that timeline.

Dredge it, sieve it, scan it, mudlark it, whatever you want to call it.

Because that way you can unearth something valuable to RT so it doesn´t go undetected and under appreciated.

Go find that needle in the haystack.

Go back in time.

Because history is important.

That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach. - Aldous Huxley

Beep Beep Beep by Ian Han © Flickr

¿Te gusta indagar?

¿Te gusta conocer a la gente no sólo por lo que dicen ahora mismo y hace unos pocos días, pero también por lo que dijeron hace meses?

No te pasa alguna vez que quisieras indagar algo más de lo permitido en Twitter, más alla de los siete días que guarda el propio Search de Twitter.

Tienes la opción de consultar el timeline de una persona en twitter.com pero no resulta tan fácil rebobinar hacia atrás.

Podrías optar por pulsar en more en el pie de página. Pero no es muy útil.

O podrías hacer lo siguiente:

Añadele ?page=XXX al final de la URL de Twitter a quién quieras rastrear

http://twitter.com/paulgailey?page=130

Reemplaza XXX por el número que quieras. Cuanto más alto sea, más antiguo te devolverá los resultados.

Podrás introducir cualquier número hasta 160, por lo tanto la fecha de actualizaciones varia en función de lo activo que sea el tuitero.

Si te interesa algo del timeline a quien acabas de followear seguro que encontrarás otra joya en su pasado.

Indaga. Indaga.

Porque así podrás hacer un RT de algo de valioso para que no pase desapercibido.

Indaga.

Porque la historia es importante.

That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach. - Aldous Huxley 

Quizá la mayor lección de la Historia es que nadie aprendió las lecciones de la Historia