I remem­ber 10 years ago.

In the wake of rumored pro­pos­als to reg­u­late the web, in 1999 the CRTC, com­pa­ra­ble to America’s FCC, offi­cially declared that the Inter­net is not a broad­cast medium.

Now, that rul­ing was sig­nif­i­cant for many reasons.

Tech­ni­cally, the Inter­net is a medium. But the gov­ern­ment based its deci­sion on the fact that the web is inter­ac­tive with its audi­ence — unlike other uni­di­rec­tional, one-​​way broad­cast media such as the TV or radio. As a result, reg­u­la­tors con­cluded the Inter­net could there­fore police itself.

(The “Net Neu­tral­ity” debate of late is a per­fect exam­ple that it is different.)

Nev­er­the­less, my point here is not a polit­i­cal one but a marketing-​​related one.

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In an ear­lier blog post, I talked about the fact that lately I’ve been lean­ing a lot more towards test­ing the reduc­tion in bottlenecks.

Some of the results are staggering!

In short, the more I increase the sense of secu­rity and trust, bet­ter the flow and ease of order­ing, and project a more con­gru­ent and pro­fes­sional image, the more sales I make.

Since that post, some read­ers have asked me for some exam­ples. I pre­fer not to reveal mine as they are pro­pri­etary. But I can say this…

One of the things that I’m start­ing to really like are ecom­merce sites that are less “saleslet­ter­ish” — i.e., less long-​​scrolling copy in a direct-​​mail for­mat, and more clus­tered lay­outs that are reader-​​focused, commerce-​​centric, and action-​​driven.

They still use com­pelling copy and a solid response mech­a­nism. If the user needs more details, a “more info” link then sends them to a typ­i­cal, long copy saleslet­ter. But these sites’ front-​​end are more action-​​oriented than they are scrolling-​​oriented.

I’ve decided to test this with our main web­site at Suc­cess Chef. I still use long copy. But I’ve con­verted the front-​​end into an ecom­merce, multi-​​product, catalog-​​like format.

And the results are in…

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Back in late 2006, what started out as a New Year’s series of pre­dic­tions of sorts osten­si­bly became one of the most down­loaded, most con­tro­ver­sial, and most talked about doc­u­ments in the his­tory of my career.

It was in keep­ing with that annual Jan­u­ary tra­di­tion, where a plethora of blog­gers flood the Inter­net with their pre­dic­tions about online trends, emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies, Inter­net flops, grow­ing indus­tries, rumored takeovers, ad nauseum.

But I’m no futur­ist by any stretch. I’m a copy­writer by trade.

But I’ve seen some tremen­dous changes, mostly “behind the scenes,” and I wanted to join in the tra­di­tion. Par­tic­u­larly, I wanted to share not only some­thing I was pas­sion­ate about, but also some­thing I knew was going to affect online copy in sig­nif­i­cant ways.

Now that sev­eral years have passed, I’m astounded by how true my pre­dic­tions were…

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Some peo­ple tend to tweet, blog, post, and status-​​update their lit­tle hearts out. Be it on Twit­ter, Face­book, LinkedIn, MySpace, their own blog, or what­ever. They say it’s all about trans­parency, and trans­parency is good.

But I think we need to be careful.

While we may be open­ing our­selves up for the world to see, we may be open­ing our­selves up a world of trou­ble, too.

Trans­parency may seem like the lat­est fash­ion. But it can also become dan­ger­ous on many lev­els. Some dan­gers are obvi­ous, like being robbed after pub­li­ciz­ing you were out. Oth­ers, not as much, like being rep­ri­manded for say­ing some­thing you shouldn’t have said, or even being fired for insult­ing your customers.

My con­tention is, too much trans­parency can hurt you in many ways.

I agree that social media is great for devel­op­ing and nur­tur­ing rela­tion­ships. That’s what the word “social” in social media means. Or what it should mean, anyway.

But as with all rela­tion­ships, even when con­tin­u­ous, open com­mu­ni­ca­tion is an impor­tant com­po­nent, there should be a lit­tle mys­tique to keep the flame alive. A lit­tle room to allow for explo­ration and dis­cov­ery over a period of time instead of all at once.

In today’s open, Web 2.0 world, pri­vacy is more cru­cial than ever before. Why? Because trans­par­ent or not, every­thing you say online is per­ma­nent, can be found, and can be eas­ily mis­in­ter­preted. Espe­cially when taken out of context.

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I rarely do this.

But after my last blog post on the idea that Twit­ter is pop­u­lated by drones and fakes, Tiffany Dow posted a spir­ited rebut­tal to my blog post.

A gaunt­let has been thrown down.

I felt com­pelled to respond.

In fact, I posted sev­eral com­ments. But that’s not what I meant when I said “I rarely do this.” (I always love a healthy debate.) What I rarely do is repost my com­ments on its own blog post, which is what I’m doing now.

Why? Because I believe they’re rel­e­vant and impor­tant to this discussion.

So here are some of them, with a few addi­tional edi­to­r­ial com­ments here and there. (Yes, I know this blog post is long, and I apol­o­gize in advance. But I think you’ll find this dis­cus­sion insight­ful, if not some­what interesting.)

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My oper­at­ing assump­tion is when the broad­cast news media pikes any­thing as “the next big thing” then likely the ship has already sailed. And see­ing trag­i­cally unhip sen­a­tors like @clairecmc madly exer­cis­ing their thumbs dur­ing the Pres­i­den­tial Address to the Joint Ses­sion didn’t do any­thing to dis­pel that notion with regards to Twitter.

So when my copy of @JoelComm’s Twit­ter Power: How to Dom­i­nate Your Mar­ket One Tweet at a Time arrived in the mail, I fig­ured here was another case of early adopter Joel wav­ing from the deck to hap­less gang­plank standers by.

What could Joel have to say that I hadn’t already heard since actively join­ing Twit­ter late last year? And what can he say to any­one who hasn’t been tweet­ing at least that long to help them “dom­i­nate their market”?

Quite a bit, it turns out.

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I feel kinda bad.

Julie Isaac, who com­mented on a pre­vi­ous blog post in which I said I was prepar­ing for my upcom­ing Web 2.0 copy­writ­ing work­shop, was upset with me. And for good rea­son, too. Here’s what she said:

This is the first time, since you announced it in May, that I’ve seen you write about your Web 2.0 Copy­writ­ing work­shop. Are you still plan­ning it for the week­end of Novem­ber 10th? I’ve been hold­ing that week­end open since I heard your plans, but finally gave up, fig­ur­ing you must have post­poned it. Just last week, I signed up for some­thing else that week­end. Please tell me I’m not going to miss your workshop!!!

Sorry to dis­s­a­point you, Julie. But yes, the sem­i­nar is indeed that weekend.

The saleslet­ter is not up yet, but if this sem­i­nar inter­ests you, you can cer­tainly go there now and join the noti­fi­ca­tion list. That way, you will be noti­fied as soon as the web page is up so you can register…

Click here for the Web 2.0 Copy­writ­ing workshop.

(You gotta see what Dan O’Day has in store for you… He shared it with me last night on the phone, and it blew me away! You’re going to love this event. Plus, with Google Audio Ads com­ing out, his stuff is very timely.)