10,741 Tips On How To Get Your Shorts Whiter and Your Teeth Brighter
Late Night Lists
Don’t get me wrong by reading at my title but I love lists all those pages full of life saving advice, neatly listed out for my convenience. I lov’em and I don’t use the word love lightly or often but I’m in love with all those cute lists, as much as any online tip-hound but things are getting a little out of hand.
Look at these search results - “Tips on how too…” providing 329 million tip lists in 0.29 seconds.
Google Search Results - "tips on how too..."
Or these results - “10 Things…” providing 438 million lists of 10 things in 0.67 seconds.
Google Search Results - "10 things"
That Google search thing is really incredible and I hope it takes off one day without indexing all those lists. Let me start by congratulating number one, two and three on both search lists. Getting those spots on any given day is a real accomplishment, really it is! 800 million search results delivered in less than one second and they got the three top spots - awesome work - the kings of the lists. I’m not here to give out trophies or send flowers but pose two questions:
How many items should you put in a list?
- Five - Maybe?
- Ten - A little, tiny bit long.
- Fifteen - OK Grandpa, you’re getting a little long winded with that same old World War II invasion story. Heard it yesterday at breakfast too.
- Twenty - Now you’ve pushed the envelope way beyond realistic, shorten it up buddy or go to court and see the judge!
Damn I’ve created another list. I’m must be a List-A-Holic, help please me! Call List-Anonymous I’m addicted to lists!!
‘SOS’ call the list-guard!!! I’ve been kissed by a list mutt - Lucy I’m in need a 5 cent list of psychiatric self help.
Don’t laugh, I’ve seen so many list-aholics worse off than me. Publishing these mindless lists which seem to appear online every nano second as a lame and transparent marketing ploy, trying to attracting list-isitors. And the legions of list developers keep growing like a virus, they must be stopped. Is everyone on the planet looking for a short cut in business and life? I’m begging you please stop with the lists, help me to help you.
Let’s look at a good web site example, Mashable the popular online destination for everything digital and tech related they have a list tab . Come on a list tab? Now I enjoy Mashable quite a bit and they get a boat load of visitors (way more than me) but please a f*^%#$* list tab. Give me a break.
Mashable - List Tab
List Crazy - Mashable
This is getting crazy and can it last?
It feels like to me, that right about now the whole list craze is becoming tire and deserves a good long rest. How about we work together and give lists a much deserved rest? Let’s band together and form a world anit-list alliance and rally for the creation of compelling and custom content. Publishing online content that has some original creative value and is strong enough to stand alone without the sad listing.
But if you insist on the listing, here’s the second piece of list advice:
- Three is best.
- Short.
- Simple.
- Compete relevance is a must.
See it still feels slightly long, redundant and over-used. Why? Because it is. It’s to easy to keep doing those damn listless lists of brainless mushy content.
What do you think - got what it takes to skip the list?
Stella Says, ‘listing’ is a sailing terms and means to lean one way or the other usually more than desired. Are you leaning to much on lists? Come on, I know you have more talent than that… your clients are depending on it.
