That climbing vine is allegedly in your neck of the woods, too.

Oh yes, it absolutely is here. Well, at least the vine. It's supposedly very resilient.

For those of us who have the added benefit of confusing this business directory with a hearty vine, it'd be nice to have a teeny-tiny explainer on the AJC's page as to what this oddball link actually does.

The link you provided to the Sarasota section of the site (which is so totally irrelevant here that I've never heard of it) even includes a tagline:

"The easy way to find the best services"

That's exactly what the AJC needs.

Funny, this reminds me of a conversation I once had about the Recess section of my college paper. Go figure.
But while a little ambitious, I still think a publication can benefit from having a colorful name and an individual identity. How self-explanatory is Time? Rolling Stone? Playboy? These names don't so much identify the contents as they associate a character to it.
Anyone who has been to Atlanta knows kudzu. It is a presence remembered by visitors the way the birds of St. Mark's Square are associated with Venice. A publication called Kudzu, I think, immediately tells you this is specific to Atlanta. Beyond that, readers will hopefully associate specific content as time goes on.
I know in this new media age, everything should be all utilitarian and such, but I think publishers can still benefit in the long-haul developing a product with a unique identity.

I guess I need to refocus my point, which isn't that Kudzu is a totally bad name. The point is that the AJC's treatment of its partnership with the site is poor. They've posted a tab randomly called Kudzu and when folks click through, there is nothing on the site explicitly explaining the function of the section.

Kudzu is a vine, Kudzu.com is a local search engine that started in Atlanta two years ago. The folks who live here are pretty well aware of both.

The former grows about a foot a day covering cars, trees and small pets. The latter is a pretty good web site that has a ton of reviews and profiles from local Atlanta businesses (it's just starting out elsewhere -- not much in Florida obviously).

You're right though it's not obvious to out of town visitors to the site. But what's the big deal?

Well, that's interesting that there's an assumption most everyone in Atlanta knows what the site is already. That seems like a very optimistic statement after just two years of existence.

It's not impossible. But let me just I'm pretty skeptical that Kudzu.com has achieved such a high level of market penetration in such a short time.

The big deal here is that cute names don't work on newspaper Web sites. That's not to say you can't use them. But for Pete's sake, when they're used please also include some sort of explainer on the page for those folks who have no idea what Kudzu.com can do for them.

If you don't do at least that, then don't expect to magically impart the utility purpose of a site named after a vine to the average newbie.

Oh, and by the way, new people move to Atlanta all the time. Are they to just be ignored until someone fills them in?

Just thought I would throw some support to Lucas here, as I stumbled upon this site when looking for an explaination of what Kudzu is. I found a link in google news to an article on the AJC website. While there, I saw the Kudzu.com branding and menu item, so I clicked on it. I wasn't really able to tell exactly what I was looking at from the first look arount the resulting page, (at first I thought it was a web hosting company or something), so I googled Kudzu and found this page.

Anyway, my point is that Lucas is right. The page would benefit from containing at least a tagline or a brief explaination of what it is, or viewers that stumble upon it will not understand what the point of the page is and leave almost immediately.

BTW, on the WWW, it doesn't matter that Atlanta natives are familiar with the plant or the site, as there are vast amounts of hits to the site from non-Atlanta based readers. By having them leave from a lack of understanding of the page, you are giving up not only potentially new regular viewers, but probably ad-click dollars as well.

Don't let them bring you down Lucas...

Wow. Your comment proves my point exactly, Jeff. Thanks so much for leaving it.

I'm fond of telling university students that I visit how important it is to picture your users before writing a blog. In the case of the AJC, I wish they could have pictured a user in Jeff's predicament and then added a simple tagline as a signpost.

I've written some more about this in a new post.

Lucas - I think you got results. I checked out kudzu.com and now it has a line next to the logo that says "The easy way to find the best services."