404 pages shouldn't be dead ends

Anyone who has surfed the Web for any time has hit a so-called 404 error page. These are "page not found" messages that are served when a person types a bad url or the content no longer exists at that address. 

This TED presentation from Renny Gleason points out that most website operators are missing a great opportunity to make the most of a bad situation. Instead of serving up a page full of technical jargon -- usually technical wording peppered with references to "404" -- why not deliver a page that aims to restore "a broken relationship"?

This something we've been doing on The Bakersfield.com Network for awhile. Here are five screenshots of our 404 pages.

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Facebook launches surcharges on posts

We heard recently that Facebook was testing the concept of charging business users to post but I didn't expect the real thing to arrive in the States so soon.

Facebook has launched a "Promote Your Page" feature in which it's asking members with business pages to pay extra to have their posts reach more of their fans. As Facebook writes:

"When you promote a post, it will be shown in the news feeds of more of the people who like your Page than you would reach normally. Friends of the people who have interacted with your post will also be more likely to see the story in their news feeds for up to 3 days from when the post was first created."

Pricing for this feature appears to be all over the map, with variations according to the number of fans you have, want to reach, when, where and in what language. 

In our case with The Bakersfield Californian's fan page, on Tuesday night Facebook was asking us to pay $5 for every 1,100 fans we wanted to reach with a "promoted" post. This morning, that fee had changed to $5 for only 500 fans (up to $30 and 3,000 fans, or half of our fan base). On the Bakersfield Mom fan page, which has slightly more than 1,000 fans, Facebook's pricing this morning was $5 for 900 and $10 for 1,500. 

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Paralyzed by too much choice

The Internet has given us many great things, but it's also overwhelmed our senses. When given the opportunity to dive deep into uncharted territory, many of us prefer to stick to our comfort zones. 

This comes to mind after reading Eamonn Forde's excellent Word magazine story "The Tyranny of Music Choice" (no link because it's print-only). The gist of Forde's piece is that given a wealth of music online, we tend to keep going back to very popular songs. There's a reason Top 20 and classic-rock stations are a staple in every city. 

Case in point is Spotify, the brilliant music-streaming service that makes it easy to stream and share millions of songs. Despite this rich archive of music in front of us, Forde notes that a recent study of Spotify usage indicated that roughly one-third of the 4.5 million songs in its database were never played over a six-month period. And when he says "never," he means zero, nada, zilch, nil. 

More alarming is that 100,000 songs accounted for about 80 percent of Spotify's streams. 

I guess I shouldn't be surprises. Just as restaurant experts will tell you too many menu items overwhelm customers and erode their overall experience, the thought of diving into a morass of unknown talents can be intimidating. Discovering memorable music can be work, and for many of us, we're either too starved for time or just simply too lazy. 

With that in mind, I'll share a few shortcuts on new music that's captured my attention. I'm in no way on the cutting edge of music like I once was, but I do like to stay up on trends.  

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