Writing, marketing and technology
I became interested in Zopa, the MySpace of online lending, after I wrote about them for Director.
They have a nice informal tone of voice and use the ‘us / you’, ‘your / our’ convention which makes things friendlier and easier to follow. However, it spotted one place where it got them into trouble:
It’s my lending, my borrowing but your personal details. I suppose this reinforces the point that you have to write harder if you want to write informal.
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Matthew Stibbe is CEO of Articulate Marketing and Turbine, the easy, online way to deal with office paperwork. He edits Golf Hotel Whiskey and writes the Forbes Aviator column.
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As a web developer I’ve always wondered how you should refer to the user. You see the use of My a lot MySpace or My Profile for example. But My usually implies ownership by the person saying it. To me it means belonging to the computer system and not to the user.
So shouldn’t MySpace really be called YourSpace?
My fault!
Good spot – will be changed quick-sharpish.
Wow! Within an hour or so, they’ve changed it. I had no idea that anyone from Zopa would actually read this. It was more a comment on consistency. Still, sometimes my grasp exceeds my reach
I agree about the MySpace / YourSpace point. But the main thing is to be consistent whichever way you go.
I certainly agree Matthew. It’s one of those classic wood for the trees things – I must have stared at that screen at least a thousand times and never once stopped to think about it.
I’ll have to raise my game now I know you’re checking…!
“….I’ll have to raise my game now I know you’re checking…!”
I’ll be checking too. I’m a My Lender!
Excellent – that’ll keep me on my toes.
Actually, and rather pertinently, I’m about to test out having a hopper where members (and Zopa Team Members) can post any typos/syntax errors/inconsistencies they see on site, and which I promise to sort out within 48 hours.
As a self-confessed pedant myself, I’d love to be able to do that when I spot things on other sites – so am keen to give it a blast at Zopa!
What do you reckon? Anyone seen other sites try something similar?
Great response there from zopa tom – but I have a question. Should I be signing in to Zopa with your name and your password or my name and my password
It’s a minefield!
I’m slightly relieved/disappointed nobody’s spotted a missing apostrophe that has been nagging at me for months, and which is being fixed in a matter of hours….
We noticed. We were just being polite
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