I think every field has its own subset of language that makes most sense to them. I am sure a lot of words that make perfect unambiguous sense to tech people, would confuse non-tech people who would say "why don't you simply say it like..."

The term "vertical" seems to be common amongst executives. I first came across the term when my father asked about the verticals of companies I was applying to. It appears to mean "line of business" or "field of work" or "subset of market". For example a company catering to textile industries, banks, pharmaceuticals, would have these "verticals".

So "content verticals" immediately made sense to me as "subsets of the content they produce".

PS: "we're deepening our reach into multiple markets by adding new content verticals." makes perfect sense because executives really do see the move as moving into multiple markets (or market segments) as each new magazine caters to a different class of people

It's just a term of art specific to media. There is no conspiracy here.

It makes some sense in comparison to horizontal when looking at the structure of an organisation: you can either slice it at seniority level, so all the workers together in one layer, all the managers, all the upper management, all the executives and so on.

Or, you can slice it vertically, into departments, with all the levels of seniority together grouped by what they're actually doing. You could call them departments, you could call them markets, but those terms are already taken.

Don't forget "leverage" instead of "use", "orthogonal" instead of "unrelated", and "onboarding" instead of "training"!

You forgot to pivot a second time.

It seems that the adjective 'completely' can be used to mean 'dis-'.

I couldn't agree more with your learnings.

I've had the same experience. I'd add that after you learn and internalize the slang, you can usually see it falling into one of three broad categories:

1. It's a genuinely useful term, descriptively named, for which no good succinct alternative exists: eg, "outrage porn."

2. A genuinely useful term, poorly named, but excusable because it already has an entrenched history and community using it: eg, "monad" in functional programming.

3. A confusing term, poorly named, for which many good alternatives exist, but which continues to thrive on meme status, or for political reasons, within a particular community. A lot of marketing and business slang, and PC terminology, falls into this category.

So I think it's valid to criticize slang in category 3. That is, not all slang is created equal, or for equal reasons.

Interesting, as "content" on its own has been / can still be a somewhat dirty word in this context. Some folks who write stories, take photos, or shoot video don't appreciate their works referred to as content. Some still prefer author, photographer, film maker to "content creator." But it's a handy, encompassing term.

When multiple authors, photographers, videographers create works around similar topics and themes, "content verticals" can be a useful term. Still some have little love for it.

Most trades develop a vernacular particular to the trade...this makes it easy for those in the trade to distinguish between knowledgeable tradesmen and those who are new...

It's a rite of passage...

Go work a construction site...a hospital...a day care center...if you're new you'll either pick up on the "code" or be somewhat of an outsider until you do...

It's the price of true admission...

"Content categories" would probably work fine.

I don't think it's as simple as that. The complaint is about the vulgarity of executive jargon. The underlying problem with it all is the belief that they are at the top of a non-meritocratic hierarchy. Positions that have been attained largely bullshitting and politicking (and of course hard work, just not necessarily productive hard work). The jargon is just a small part of that.

Fundamentally if someone can program well they will get hired. Whether one is suited to run a large company or not well its complicated and the outcomes often make the world (and indeed their companies) a worse place. At least that is the at least somewhat justified belief.

That said, personally I think it is reasonably descriptive. What I do object to is when it leaks into normal life. Get new 'content'... my you have got good taste in content (points to bookshelf)

I've been lurking in your /threads page for a good while, and this single-scentence post conjures up an excellent comic strip image. Keep up the good work!

I'm sorry you've been rubbed the wrong way to be so bitter on just a term.

Upper management too. Have you ever been to a board meeting of a public company?

Everyone invents slang to seem more important.

It's the content that takes effort to maintain, not the code.

When I left Yahoo travel in 2011, and there wasn't much shared source between verticals. We shared the same software stack (mostly), where that includes os, web server, PHP, MySQL, yui, a search engine, sometimes a PHP framework, but all of the pages were pretty specific to the vertical. Generic pages wouldn't work very well -- details for a hotel aren't really that similar to details for a car; and genericizing it means more process to make changes and a less compelling site.

When I left they were working on a unified data processing system for this group of verticals, which didn't really work. Two years later, they just got rid of most of the content, in favor of big pictures and articles. I'm guessing that's why there's no traffic and they're shutting them down.

I'm sorry if you were offended, but "dropping a bomb" is a common idiomatic expression that has nothing to do with physical violence. It simply means, "to say something shocking or unexpected."

http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/drop+a+bomb