About Us

June 1, 2010
Stacey Mason

William Hertling, a consumer support strategist for Hewlett Packard, recently gave a talk on “rethinking the link: social jargon.” The talk raises interesting points about linking, wikis, and micro-writing, as Hertling takes advantage of these insights with the new site, AboutUs.com. AboutUs combines a glossary of social jargon with a site for Twitter-sized reviews about other Web sites.

Hertling examines that digital culture has already had a huge impact on writing by making it inclusive and giving more subject background through links. Text messaging has shortened our messages. He predicts that services like AboutUs will accelerate the evolution of language and allow specialized language to be used more freely, as more people will have a concise definition and context for it. He also predicts that as more people are used to having context for words, non-digital reading will become more difficult since you won’t be able to look up words as you go.

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