The Lingo of Our Lives

I work at a large .com in Los Angeles and while we stay current with technology and we watch upcoming trends, there will always be words that we need to use to remain part of a thriving web economy:

Advermation: the cross between advertising and information. It's a form of online advertising portrayed not so much as a marketing message as it is information to the viewer.

Angry Garden Salad: a slang term for a poorly designed and incorrectly coded website interface. We've all found a website that when we click on a link, it takes us to something we totally didn't expect.

Cornea Gumbo: a visually distracting and over-designed website with too many graphics, images and animation.

Infosnacking: the act of jumping online at various times throughout the day for brief intervals.

Interstitial: a form of advertising that appears as a pop-up or an intermediate online page that the viewer sees when they are moving from page to page.

Mash-up: a web-based application that combines two or more services or tools from diverse websites to create a unique, multilevel tool.

PeelAway: a pop-up ad that appears in the top right corner of a website. It looks like a page on a book that you can peel away to reveal the ad beneath.

Plugoo: a widget that's connected to your IM provider; allowing you to chat in real time with your site visitors.

Rasterbator: a web designer who suffers from CDM, or compulsive digital manipulation, in additional to obsessively tweaking designs in PhotoShop.

TweetBeep: a free tracking and alerting service that monitors conversations monitoring you, your company's name and more. It sends you emails when those mentions occur.

Words all of us in the Internet Age should know

Each year will always bring a new set of business phrases and 2009 is no different. Among the list of phrases we all should know:

Google slap: This is when your search engine ranking takes an unexpected nose dive. Often, this is a result of a search engine changing its ranking methodology.

Cockroach theory: When you see one cockroach, you know there are many more, they just aren't visible. This phrase refers to bad financial news. It means there is more bad news where that came from.

Cautious pause: This is when businesses (and people) stop to ponder every purchase instead of buying on impulse or blindly approving purchases under a certain amount and only stopping to review large purchases.

Fear is not a growth strategy. Period.

This is the headline from an editor's note in the February 2009 edition of Entrepreneur Magazine.

In this editor's note, Amy C. Cosper (Editor-in-Chief) says "Fear makes us irrational -- like thinking cutting and growing are the same thing. Cutting costs does not equal growing sales. Never has. Never will."

Those words really struck me as I read them. I couldn't agree more and it is refreshing to see people in influencial positions write so eloquently the thoughts that have been on my mind for the past months.

I also read in a magazine last year about the remifications of making multiple staffing cuts in an organzation that is downsizing as opposed to making one large cut. The mental ramifications and the loss of productivity from existing staff are tremendous. I worked for an organization that went thru so many staff reductions that by the time I left, I actually walked in the door each day wondering who would be let go that day. Would it be me? While I felt secure in my strengths, abilities and what I could deliver to the organization, the multiple cuts were taking their toll and I found myself no longer wanting to give my all to an organization that couldn't get a hold of their business and make firm decisions they could stand behind.

We all know the economy hasn't hit the bottom yet. It is frustrating to be an employee at a business where management is so short-sighted that they are unable to see past tomorrow.

While I think all of use have to head into each work-week with a cautious eye on the market and other economic factors, we also need to be motivated and we need to be productive. Once you stop producing for a business, you are giving them every reason to let you go. Make your impact...and make it known.