Dictionary.com
presents definitions like a TV network shows reruns. The definitions and the TV
shows were probably produced for the sake of entertainment or information
alone. But it’s also likely that TBS no longer schedules old episodes of
“Seinfeld” to air at seven just because the timing will allow the most people
to be entertained. I suspect that TBS organizes its reruns based on the
likelihood of targeted demographics watching, so that it can air its advertisements
with more people focused on the channel. The presentation of reruns would then
support the advertising.
Dictionary.com takes the reruns of
the online reference source—grammar rules, synonyms, and definitions—and
presents them more attractively than they appear in a printed dictionary. The website
offers several features intended to interest web surfers, including its “Word of
the Day” and quotes using any word that is defined. It’s possible that
dictionary.com means to use these features to keep more people on the site and
help build their vocabularies, however, these different features deliver
information that is more trivial than it is geared towards enriching someone’s
understanding of English vocabulary. The quotes that are presented mostly use
the defined word without emphasis on its meaning, and suggest that they are not
meant to be well understood or used to interpret the meaning of the word. Dictionary.com
even gives the potential scores for Scrabble and Words with Friends, games that
do not prize a word’s meaning. The links to presentations on unique words similarly
avoid word meanings. For example, dictionary.com has a slideshow about the only
word to contain the letters x, y, and z, and it engages viewers like a Scrabble
dictionary: with a focus on the triviality of the spelling.
These slideshows also allow
dictionary.com to send web surfers through several links, showing them multiple
advertisements. The website displays between 1 and 5 different ads simultaneously,
but these advertisements accompany the definitions of words differently than
they do to the content of other websites; the search bar of dictionary.com acts
like a search engine. The word that is defined is used as a keyword to feed the
searcher one or more advertisements based off of it. Looking up the word
“education” presents an ad for ITT Tech, whereas “brain” advertises
lumosity.com. Adword by Google is used to show the site’s visitors such specific
advertisements. Employing this third party to help dictionary.com with
advertisements, and the links of its slideshows, suggest that the site’s
commitment, rather than to information, is to profit off of its popularity. By capturing
word searchers’ attentions with its presentation, dictionary.com may not have given
them a greater understanding of its content, but it has given Google a primetime
for advertisements.
Interesting post, Josh. I am thrilled that you wrote about something slightly unconventional. I never would have thought about how the internet media mogul (read sarcasm) "dictionary.com" exploits marketing to support itself. You write well, and you have found an interesting topic to explore. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteI have two issues, though, with your response. First, I found the initial analogy to television reruns to be distracting and not 100% appropriate. I get what you are saying. Reruns and words are pre-existing entities that are manipulated - at least according to you - to generate advertising revenue. The burden is not to create a medium of entertainment, but to arrange an existing medium to generate revenue. I understand. However, the connection still feels choppy to me. It feels like a forced connection to me. The television rerun does not invite viewers into a maze of links.
Also, I wish you would have given an example to support your exploration of "dictionary.com." For instance, I was craving a sample quote that presented a word out of the context of its definition. You kept writing about your observations without actually sharing one with us. You didn't even share what the x, y, z word is. I know you have a word limit, but you could have easily offered some tangible evidence to support your analysis.