First Two Ws

By Ashok Argent-Katwala

The Web is becoming more fragmented, and not quite so World-Wide. More and more often, I get to sites that can't show me what I'm there for because of where I seem to be coming from.

I know there's nothing in the internet's protocols that reliably dobs in where you are coming from, so it never really gets in the way.

Having recently moved from the UK to Canada, I naturally want to keep in touch with the old country. Moreover, I watch a number of things from our southern neighbours. As a geek I have no trouble routing my traffic so that I can see the end result. It's always a little clumsy but works in the end. If the BBC let me pay for an overseas TV licence, I'd likely jump at the chance.

I've been misidentified as German, Swedish and, very occasionally, Polish. If it's just Google taking a best-guess as to which site you'd likely prefer with a clear link back to what you actually asked for, that's fairly harmless.

[Image from the NASA Earth Observatory, by Reto Stöckli, based on data from NASA and NOAA. Thank you.]

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More insidious, however, is what happens with a number of the commercial video sites.

It is now routine to jump you through all of the hoops to play a video, only to then say something vague like "This Content doesn't seem to be working - Try again later" (BBC), or Channel 4's "The service is not currently available in your area.", with an explanatory 'click here' link leading to a page that just says 'Knowledge Server Error - please try again'. Sometimes they even show you an ad first, then the non-apology apology.

At least Hulu has slapped an overlay saying 'Sorry, currently our video library can only be streamed from within the United States'. When they first launched they had forgotten there was a world beyond the US, so even let me sign up for an account from the UK. At least they claim they want to make it globally available, and are working on sorting the rights out.

And that's the key. If these publishers want to compete with the truly global, high quality, DRM-free video files that people are sharing amongst friends then they'll need to make pages – and videos – that work globally, and work at least as well as the pirated copies. I'm sure for some content getting all of the parties to agree is tricky, but for some things I suspect it's just that the default option is to restrict. Is it really a problem to show a ten-second animation of the new Doctor Who logo?

It isn't good enough to abort playing a specific video, and just link to a regional partner's site that might have the video on it somewhere. For that to be useful you have to link to the same video.

What would be better? I think fitting in well on the World-Wide Web requires a few things:

Be linkable

Each piece of content needs it's own Web address, and preferably just one. The BBC's /programmes is a great example of how to do this well.

Be globally useful

Preferably just serve the damn thing, but where you can't: make very specific alternatives available. You want to be the best place to link to for your own content, or you will suffer when it comes to search rankings that use links as votes.

Be there for the long haul

Keep doing something useful a week, a month and years later. Links that rust are always annoying, and any piece of content can catch the public attention again, a long time after it first airs.

If you can't manage those things, then at least warn people when you encourage them to embed your video elsewhere. Otherwise, they'll likely be surprised when their friend from across the ocean, or from a fortnight hence, complains that it has broken.