Last week you may have seen a raft of articles celebrating the fact that it’s 25 years since Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the web. If you’re a reader of some of the more technical media, you may also have noticed a number of commentators bemoaning the fact that that several media outlets committed the heinous crime of calling the web the Internet.
The bottom line is that many people use the words web and Internet interchangeably. They simply don’t care that one’s the pipes and the other’s the way you navigate. To your average Joe it’s all the same thing.
And the media outlets that didn’t get it right know this. They know their audience well enough to know that, despite the fact that Sir Tim was part of the marvelous opening ceremony for London 2012, most of those watching don’t make a distinction between the web and the Internet. They know that it’s too technical. In the same way that they know that people don’t care how their latest mobile phone works, or the technical reasons behind the different HD formats of their televisions. What they do know is that a Briton invented a part of one of the most significant technological shifts of the last century and that’s what matters to their readers.
Which is of course the same reason that the media outlets who bemoaned the crime also wrote about the fact they got it wrong – they know their readership do care.
It’s all about writing for your audience. Something it’s easy to forget about when we get caught up in the excitement of our products or services. So remember, whether you care about calling it the web or the Internet, it’s what your readers care about that matters more.