There’s a rather strange meme spreading at the moment that argues that the term “user” is dead.
The short argument is that because we are all users, the term is redundant. Josh Bernoff claims that because we don’t refer to people as users of dishwashers, we shouldn’t refer to people using computers as users either, but simply people. Max Kalehoff believes the user is dead, but can’t define what a user is. Thomas Vander Wal believes that the term user is a put down that stops companies from seeing people as individuals.
I’m a user and I’m proud of it. I’m not “people”, nor do I want to be. If you’re reading this post there is a 100% chance that you’re a user as well. People is a plural expression that treats us all as sheep. User is a term that in referring to the individual can be owned by one and owned by many at the same time. In being users we are all individuals as it refers to us.
Web 2.0 is the pinnacle of being a user. Not only do we use the internet, we use it for self gratification as well. Use cuts both ways. Users are not users of technology alone but users of other people. We share our personal thoughts and creative endeavors with as many people that would care to view, listen or watch it. The people providing the drugs to a generation of user junkies are now nearly unilaterally expecting attention in return as well.
What I don’t understand is why? is there a better term than user? referring to “you can” instead of “users can” might work well on personal blogs, but it dosn’t work well anywhere else, Web 2.0 junkies is somewhat rude, even if it’s partially accurate for some, and Youse or Y’all only works well in Queensland and certain Southern States in America. Perhaps others may have more creative suggestions.
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Users should be called Players. We are all players baby. One of the best things I learned at the Web 2.0 conference.
> is there a better term than user?
Depends on the site or service you’re talking about. “User” is often good in the context of tools. “Reader” might fit for a blog. “Participant” might fit if the blog community is very active too. “Searcher” when you’re talking about a search engine (though a search engine is also a tool, so “search engine user” makes sense too). “Visitor” is often a good general term in replacement of user when you’re not talking about a tool.
And, if I’m inputting some of above terms into the useful Google Sets tool, I’m also getting…
- member
- guest
- buyer
- customer
- and staff
I think the point of why Josh, Max and Tom think the term user sucks is because outside the 2.0 echo chamber (TC, mashable, R/W, GigaOM and couple of others) people DO NOT label/think of themselves as users.
As ideas of web2.0 expand out to main stream we need to cultivate better terms so people can empathize and relate to the new concepts.
Otherwise we shall continue to enjoy the 2.0 ecosystem in private.
Duncan, I think this was a dumb thing to write about. Or, at the least, your post should have been short and sweet — “user” is a descriptive term, and there is nothing better, so we should go with it.
Duncan, I think you are certifiably retarded.
As they say, there are only two professions who refer to their customers as “users”.
You’re right Duncan, there’s nothing better and we should stick with it.
this is so moronic. i’m a user of life dude…
Queensland? in Australia? or did youse mean Queens? “Y’all” is just a contraction and, as such, is pretty much irrelevant to the topic.
You all come back now, ya hear?
I never said the term user is dead. I just said it ought to be.
The flood of responses on my blog confirms it — the closer you are to the machine, the more you think “user” is a good way to talk about people. Whereas if you treat the users are people, things look different.
In our book Groundswell, I am attempting (not completely successfully) to write without “user.” It changes the whole perspective on what’s going on in social media, focusing on the relationships instead of the technology.
I would expect “user” to be near and dear to a blog whose name is “TechCrunch” with a dedication to new technology. But for all of us who end up as victims of technology as often as we are empowered by it (and who among us hasn’t been screwed by your technology once in a while), I say, time to think differently.
PS There are now three posts up at blogs.forrester.com/charleneli (”The Groundswell”) on this topic and the responses to it.
I think that it would be more beneficial to look beyond the individual as merely a “user”. We do a hell of a lot more than that, we create, distribute, connect, share, tag, and so on. User implies that we are mindlessly following some prescribed use.
@Ted,
I agree with you Ted that Duncan is R……ed.
I called them “USERS” because they use computer applications, websites and all other things releted with computer. And guess what… they don’t care.
Some people wasting their time to criticize and argue some non-sense topic.
Just like me
Ah Duncan, you spoke my mind!
Soon as I saw that meme few days ago I found its argument pretty obsolete. If referring to your site’s users as “people” can better your site I’m all for it. But I found nothing of that sort in the arguments.
This approach is reminiscent of Lev Manovich’s dismissal of interactivity as ’simply…stating the most basic fact about computers’ i.e. any term in common use can be labelled as redundant if you do not look to the qualities contained therein.
Further to Duncan’s expansion of the term above we can also talk about The User and The Used. The phrase ‘To what use are you putting all this tech?’ also comes to mind.
Oh, I love the way you put it: I’m not “people”
Some “people” are more happy to deal with the crowd rather than dealing with persons (users).
“Computational linguists are failures as human beings” one of my former bosses, an influential figure in the arena of artificial intelligence, once said. It’s still true! Who cares what service providers refer to their customers as?
Geez, how frickin lame is all this? Who really cares?
I agree with the sentiments of calling “users” of a web site “visitors.” I avoid the term “user” at all costs.
Who cares? All those people out there that have to interact with poor technology, that’s who cares.
I know these debates about terms can be lame at times, but this is really a perspective issue. The term “users” implies a focus from the perspective of the creator. If your design perspective is “those who use” then you’re missing a big opportunity. These people are actually “doers” — they are engaged in an activity or have a need to fulfill (more thoughts here). So, if your perspective is “those who do” then you’re better poised to make something great that people actually need.
Overall the term may not matter so much, but it illustrates how self centered all product and service development and design is (business professionals are worse with their “consumers”). That’s why so many things we engage with on a regular basis are so poor. A more humanistic approach is to think of people based on the activities they engage in and the goals they need to accomplish–that’s what this conversation is really about.
I vote for “Agent.”
I’m glad we care enough about the people to have this sort of argument. The good thing is to design apps with the user/people/client/humans/whatever in mind.
… or, Interacting Meat Agent, or IMA, which also reminds [the user] that [he or she] too is an IMA (I’M An IMA).
Of course I’m joking, mostly.
Greetings programs!
My goodness why is this nonsense being discussed? Users? People? Agents? Content Searchers? They’re just labels and a label is only as useful as the meaning behind it. I call them users, you can call them whatever you want.
Well done Duncan for blogging this, but I am amazed at all the gliteratti lined up to discuss this pointless topic.
End of line.
@Geoffrey McCaleb
“a label is only as useful as the meaning behind it”… I think that is exactly what the argument is about. When people (individuals or groups) are treated as “users” it implies a whole perspective that ignores the process of interaction and the role of the individual in that process. It boils down interaction to “they just use it”, which is nonsense.
Actually, this IS a really good post on an important topic, which is especially clear once you look at all the comments. “User” is, as I like to say, a four-letter word, IF you are in the business of designing and developing software, websites, or any products for people. If you are just describing how something functions, saying things like ‘the user experience sucks’ is fine. But if you are trying to design and build something, “user” is useless. The word allows organizations to think they are ‘user-focused’ without ever defining what users they are focusing on. Same problem with ‘customer-focused.’ Ask anybody in a ‘customer-’ or ‘user-focused’ company who exactly their most important users are, and what goals their customers have, and you’ll get a different answer from everybody. I guarantee it.
So I think the answer is personas. Clearly I’m biased, having done so much work on personas. But I challenge everyone who works in a company that builds products or websites to send out one email to prove my point, and it should say: “Hey guys. I’m curious about how aligned we are on our assumptions about who, exactly, our customers/users are and what problems we are trying to solve for them. Can you take five minutes and list three examples of our most important users and their needs? For example, “A mother of three who is worried about the websites her kids are visiting, and needs an easy way to keep track without having to search through the history in her browser.”"
You’re going to get answers that are not totally aligned–especially if you send the message to everyone from execs to engineers. And you really should include execs, if you are brave enough. Tell them that you’re not sure everyone in the company ‘fully understands their vision so you are trying to get some more clarity’ and that should help with the fear factor.
And alignment is the only way to get focus. And focus is the only way to build something that really kicks ass and will survive in the world of new 2.0 things coming out every single solitary day.
If not “user,” then how would you describe my relationship with (let’s say) Google? I am not a “people/person/visitor/client/customer” or anything of the sort. I am a Google user. I use Google and I use Google products.
The same could be said of most sites/companies/products, including my hair dryer.
Indeed, long live the user. (And quit hating on Duncan all the time. It’s getting silly)
what is this…dictionarycrunch?
#29
According to Godaddy that domain (dictionarycrunch.com) is available… Maybe I’ll sweep it up before Duncan gets to it!
The difference is: in new media technology as opposed to appliances, there is a constantly evolving relationship with the product. Digital media needs to serve the changing needs of constituents to stay relevant. A dishwasher doesn’t have this problem.
Sure people are participating in media, but that doesn’t change the fact that they’re users of the interfaces that facilitate this democratization. And to call the participants anything other than users is doing a disservice.
Users works well because that is what people are until a service is no longer useful to them. A person may then create a new service which has users of it’s own. It’s possible to be both a user and a creator, but why take the focus off the utility of a service to its constituents?
Even if everyone is a creator they are creating for users.
How about “tool”? this is particularly apt for the web 2.0 world as our input into social networking sites makes us all “tools” of each other. And the anonymity of the net turns normally polite civilized persons into raging a-hole fan boys, they would naturally refer to the targets of their derision as tools, while the rest of us supposed level headed bystanders refer to the them as tools, wade through some digg comments or if you are feeling web-one-point-oh-ish a slashdot comment thread. We’re all tools, embrace the web 2.0 movement so you can be a tool too!!
@ Remo
Great response, but assigning a label of user doesn’t have to ignore the role of that individual’s interactions. When you build an application, you consciously or sub-consciously define or determine the types of roles your users will fall into/perform. In the case of Google, there are users who search, users who use Google for SEO, users who use Google for ad placement (etc etc). @Tamara calls them personas, I just happen to define them as roles.
At the end of the day, they’re all still just labels. I don’t understand why changing the label from X to Y is somehow being seen as an improvement.
Gosh, why am I suddenly thinking of that George Carlin routine….you know the one where he describes how the word “shell shock” over a generation gets modified to be known as “post traumatic stress disorder”.
As a general term I don’t think “user” is so bad, but why not use more relevant terms that speak to the goal of the business? Customer, member, doctor, client, job-hunter, shopper all carry better information than “user”.
That said, I’m sure we have better things to spend our time on. I recall back when I was waiting tables, a restaurant I worked at forced everyone to stop saying customer and say “guest” instead. This change was never explained, and a waste of time and created quite a bit of giggles.
Later another manager led initiative came along to call them diners, and it was quickly accepted. At a fine-dining establishment it was a term that held meaning and resulted in the correct behavior. To eat is a five minute task, but to dine is a two hour and up pleasure seeking event. When we had customers, we brought what they ordered and dropped a check. When they were diners, we were reminded to suggest paired wines, good starters, and tasty desserts.
I’m a user of services, products, etc.
I’m also a woman and a human, a buyer and a seller, etc. etc.
There’s an issue that I think is important, about ‘users’ having different points of view, experiences, and desires that seems to be getting buried under this brouhaha about a label.
Robert Scoble’s Long Tail post is the only one I’ve read so far that talks about at least something more than just this terminology, and that is still only .01% of the iceberg, imho.
Web 2.0 “users” don’t just “use” the service but also actively produce as well as consume content. They “are” the site, more than the software that lays the platform to be used. Also, it’s not just this software platform being used. The content is not unidirectional as it used to be.
There was a discussion at Orielly Radar for a better term to reflect this behavior and how the term “user” is inept. Looking at all the terms being suggested, somehow none of them feel quite right. Since there isn’t much anything from non-internet world that has such a parallel behavior, trying to take terms from that world doesn’t quite fit in.
I think the term “weber” would be great.
Some other terms that I liked: Persona (or rather, it ought to be a weber’s persona), prosumer, and @Justin’s suggestion of “tool” :-))
roles same as persona? naah.
A little too much semantics for my taste.
I hate the term “user”. To my ear, it sounds like a restaurant calling its customers “eaters”.
“Reader”, “customer”, “member”, or “person” are better alternatives.
The user is one who uses a tool or application. So? What’s wrong with that?
“Visitor” in the sense of a “brochure-style” website is fine, but in an application it makes no sense; you don’t just visit, you use.
In the sense of technical jargon for communication among programmers/business people, user is fine - though if you don’t like the connotation, you can use “customer” or “consumer” to their faces.
But amongst programmers they need a way to refer to the person who will end up using the application that differs from the “customer”, which would be the person paying them to develop it (in the case of freelance/contracting).
User is a specific term whereas “customer” or “consumer” is not really.
Though in other senses where you are not using something, visitor and reader make perfect sense, and fit better than user.
We are all users, but with “user”, you have different roles: consumers, clients/customers, admins, etc.
‘meme’ that i’m going to blow chunks, if read that once more. pompous gibberish. talk plainly and say what you mean. the term is idea, notion, thought.
On proactive language -
User implies passivity and lack of contribution. A service is provided , and it is used (or abused.) I’m a firm believer in the “my reality is stronger than your reality” idea, the meaning behind an interaction define the roles that will be played.
Participation implies consciousness and cooperation. Not consuming a resource.
Do you want your “people” to be abusers or collaborators? This is a core concept to the new net or whatever you want to call it. Perhaps a word should be created.
Want proof? Treat someone like a 9 year old and see them acting like one. This is all very human.