in the print world, a magazine's letters department is all about interaction. It's important that readers feel like there's an opportunity for open communication. When all is quiet, I'm not thinking everyone is satisfied, I'm thinking everyone is bored. No news is bad news. Truly, though, when readers send in letters to the editor, they're not just interfacing with the magazine, they're sending a shout out to the editor, the staff, and the rest of the readership. It's not just for fun that the letters page even exists. It's important for the magazine that readers feel they can have an open dialog with the folks behind the scenes. And this benefits the readers as well--albeit in a very delayed fashion. They're getting questions answered and,in some cases, affecting change. The letters department helps prevent the magazine from acting like a lump of content. The interaction fosters a sense of community, ownership, involvement, and loyalty, which, of course, helps achieve a sustained subscription base. Any of this sounding familiar? What the letters page accomplishes, on a fundamental level, is added value. Substitute stickiness for subscription, and we can slide right into the point of this editorial. Web sites that offer content for whatever reason--retail, B2B, entertainment--should not sit back and let passive content do all the talking. We've seen sites go mad, obsessively assembling content into a collection that, according to the latest research, will attract and keep a healthy user base--it's contextual, targeted, dynamic, etc. Yet what we're experiencing is an increasingly savvy population of Web users whose initial naivete is quickly wearing off.
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