digital trends Archive

All of the recent updates to Facebook might leave you feeling a bit confused. Allow us to demystify the new Facebook for you. Check out slideshare below:

I’m going to start the post off with a well-supported premise: the advent of intelligent search (or, if you like, Google) has fundamentally altered the way users navigate the Web.  If I want to find hardcover copies of Dashiell Hammet novels on Amazon, I just give Google my syntax-free request, and voila. I don’t even need to click on the link to see what’s on the page — Google provides a page preview to the right-hand side. I can browse results from Amazon without ever visiting the page.

It isn’t really breaking news to say that navigation has changed. The question I want to ask here is: what does this new behavior mean for page design and web-based user experience? Web design is a field where methodology and best practices are in constant flux. Not only does user behavior evolve with new trends (like search and social media), but each project has its own priorities, such as visual aesthetic, intuitive functionality, lightweight utility, and so on. Usually, one of the main considerations is how easily a user can find the information he’s looking for. Over time, common practices like breadcrumbs and the “mega nav” have become prolific because they help users navigate. So I will ask again: if search has changed navigation, what else should change?

Picture a typical website in your head. What do you see in the top right-hand corner? I see a search bar. If you’re anything like me, you never use that bar because in your experience, it’s not very well implemented, and doesn’t return what you’re looking for. My proposition is this: what if we put less time into menus, and more time into perfecting that search box? If we categorize and label everything perfectly on the back-end, we can use something like Google Site Search to help users navigate through content. Site Search is to your website what Google is to the Internet, and the best part is, you don’t have to change behavior — it has already changed. This has its own implications for SEO and PageRank, but just go with me here. Why don’t we move the search bar out of that tiny corner and put it front and center?

In terms of design, I believe this loosens some of the constraints imposed by traditional navigation and allows page architects to get a little more creative. At the end of the day, the most important part of any business strategy is differentiation, which breeds memorability and repeat visitation. An innovative interface will set you apart from the masses. All that’s left is making sure it aligns with your brand message and doesn’t come at the expense of functionality. With in-site search optimization, it won’t. My prediction is that this approach will become more common, ushering in a much broader range of functional page design. What say you?

Facebook: making stalking socially acceptable since 2004. (Or did it?)

“If you build it, they will come” seems to be the motto for Facebook’s latest changes and additions. Earlier, Facebook added new “Subscription” and “Friend Filter” options, hoping to change the way people add and categorize their friends. Today, Facebook rolled out a new News Feed — with more new features (including a new media and music-sharing platform) to come.

On first glance, the new News Feed looks like the love child of Google+ and Tumblr. Good-bye, “Top News” and “Most Recent” updates. Hello, one long, scrolling, “smarter” News Feed that features photos more prominently and adjusts highlighted content according to when the user last logged in. (For more frequent, regular visitors, the News Feed will simply show updates in chronological order, and users have the option to mark or unmark certain items as a “Top Story.”)

“Today’s updates are about not missing important updates in News Feed,” Keith Schacht, Facebook News Feed Product Manager, said to Mashable.

Okay, so that’s all fair and good. I like pictures and I want to stay in touch in my friends, so I appreciate the consolidation of updates. Efficiency is great. But here’s my issue with the new News Feed: all the creepiness is concentrated in the right-hand sidebar.

For convenience, let’s call it the Meta Corner.

Not only does the Meta Corner have Facebook Chat — which is only used by people you don’t want talking to you in the first place (otherwise you would have given them your number, email, or legit screen name) — and “People You May Know” (I’ll tell you who I know, Facebook), but it now features scrolling updates of every single action your Friends have taken in real time.  It is essentially “Most Recent” updates, except now it’s in your face 24/7.

Mashable describes this as a “news ticker.” But it feels more like a “TMI consolidator.” For example:

[Screenshot courtesy of Priya Mathew]

Clicking on any single item allows you to interact with the users, thereby creating “shared experiences with your friends,” Schacht says. (And company pages, I’d like to add.)

Or you can just sit there and passively monitor all your friends’ actions. I believe the proper term for this is “creepin’.”

Over the past week, AirBnB has had its hands full with quite a PR crisis. The service, which allows private parties to list short-term accommodations for travelers and vacationers, saw one of its most-feared scenarios come to life: a host’s rented home was torn apart by the “guest,” who stole jewelry, credit cards, electronics and personal documents. Because the online community is populated largely by avid travelers, it is no surprise that EJ, the host, also authors a blog. Thus, the crisis.

It should be mentioned that EJ’s blog post did not unjustly decry AirBnB, and even describes its empathy and support in setting things right. However, the personal nature of the account and the raw tragedy it illustrates has elicited harsh criticism of the service.

Full disclosure: I recently used AirBnB to find a room in Bordeaux. With no more effort than it takes to book a hotel room, I wound up being hosted by a French librarian who provided us with fresh fruit and homemade yogurt every morning, not to mention a stack of tour guides and a view overlooking the city center. I became aware of the issue after receiving a sincere and compassionate email from AirBnB CEO Brian Chesky apologizing for the event and introducing new policies to protect hosts.

In terms of PR, the crisis has been relatively well-handled, and doesn’t insist on much analysis. What draws my attention are claims that AirBnB suffers from a flawed business model, and is doomed to undergo many similar crises in the future. The argument goes like this: as AirBnB attracts investors and goes mainstream, it will fall prey to criminals and con artists looking to take advantage of friendly travelers. This argument follows a simple set of logic, but doesn’t seem to take into account evidence to the contrary.

I currently live with a roommate I met on craigslist, and have been transacting with eBay sellers for years without issue. Of course, both these services see their fair share of problems (craigslist to be sure), but I doubt anyone can compellingly argue that they suffer from bad business models. For every bad apple, there are hundreds of trustworthy users to make these communities thrive. Wikipedia is another hugely successful project that flies in the face of behavioral expectations. AirBnB operates on the philosophy that “people are good, and we’re in this together.” After opening my bedroom window to a sunrise over the Porte Cailhau, I’ll take that bait — hook, line and sinker.

Today’s social beat post focuses on two trending stories that struck us as especially strategic. Prepare to be strategized.

Britney Draws a Crowd

Britney Spears’ label Jive Records teamed up with Crowd Factory to drive sales of her latest album. The campaign linchpin was a tool called Social Offer. Think of it as a reverse Groupon. Instead of giving discounts to every member of a large group, Social Offer gives rewards to select individual who achieve certain “gamified” goals. In this case, the goal was to drive 10 friends (and potential CD buyers) to Britney.com. Upon pre-ordering the CD, users were able to share the pre-order link with friends through a module on the purchase page, which kept track of how many of those friends subsequently clicked the link. If a user met the 10-friend quota, she got a future 20% off the whole Britney catalog. According to Mashable, a whopping 30% of all traffic to the site’s album page came through the Social Offer module.

Toyota Buys into Social Gaming

Toyota formed an agreement with Electronic Arts to advertise its well-known Prius in the increasingly popular Monopoly Millionaires Facebook game, which now boasts over 6 million users. Players can choose the Prius as their game token and build EcoGreenhouses (instead of your standard issue house), which have a Prius parked outside. The beauty of this campaign is the spot-on strategic alignment between product and delivery vehicle (take the traditional silver car token as evidence). A study released by appsavvy claims that brand promotions within apps are 11.4% more effective than your typical banner ad. Put all of these things together, and Toyota has launched a pretty commendable social media campaign.

A few days ago, Digg.com founder Kevin Rose confirmed that he has resigned from his executive position within the company to pursue other projects [learn more about Digg]. This was not exactly surprising to those familiar with recent events within the Digg community. For months now, the social news site has been faced with a multitude of problems. Decreased traffic and profitability coupled with senior staff changes have created a lot of speculation about Digg’s future. A new page design meant to reverse negative trends unfortunately backfired, bringing the site one step closer to what many perceive to be an inevitable demise. Rose’s resignation seems to be an unfortunate sign that Digg, as we knew it, will never be the same. As TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington wrote in April, “Digg without Kevin Rose isn’t really Digg any more.”

Regardless of its impending future, I think Digg deserves to be recognized as a pioneer of community-based media (full disclosure: I’ve been a semi-regular reader of Digg for a while). Below is a video clip from The Screen Savers, a program that aired on TechTV (remember TechTV?), in which Rose debuts an early version of Digg. He explains that Digg was inspired by Slashdot, a popular site for tech enthusiasts. While Slashdot ran content submitted by community members, an editor ultimately chose which articles were published. Digg, then, was Rose’s effort to make a democratic platform that ran content procured entirely by users.

A controversy from 2007 highlights Digg’s commitment to community governance. Digg administrators removed links to a pirated encryption key at the strong recommendation of their lawyers. Although site had received a cease and desist letter, users balked at the intervention and harshly criticized Digg for going against its democratic principles. They were heard. The following is a blog post from Rose at that time:

“…after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you’ve made it clear. You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be. If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.”

Legal considerations aside, Digg’s loyalty to its users is admirable. From inception to its peak, Digg.com is an excellent case study in fostering a vibrant online community. For some more detailed info about the business side of Digg and the inter-workings of its community, head on over to ReadWriteWeb for an excellent blog post.

Know of another site that pioneered social/community media? Tell us about it in the comments section.

Hey folks,

We’re reining in March with a quick update of some new social media developments:

• Facebook just acquired Beluga, a start-up responsible for building some nifty group text message apps. Perfect for making or changing plans on the go without leaving anyone out of the loop. Looks like Facebook Events are about to get even more useful.
• Speaking of Facebook, the social juggernaut just can’t keep out of trouble when it comes to privacy. And this time Congress is getting involved. Facebook is on course to facilitate the collection of user address and phone numbers through an API.
• Loopt, part geo-location service and part social network, is set to launch a new Rewards Alerts feature at SXSW Interactive. If you leave the app running on your smartphone (Android, Blackberry, iOS, Windows), Loopt will notify you of limited time offers from nearby brands. Gone are the days when users actually have to check-in for deals and discounts. Add some minutes to your travel plans, and prepare for some unexpected detours.
  

  Beluga's logo is a whale. Get it?

A couple weeks ago, Apple released a new version of its flagship desktop application, iTunes. Oftentimes, differences between each version of iTunes are subtle enough to go unnoticed by the majority of casual users, but this time, Apple spiced up the app with some social functionality. It seems that Apple, with a reputation for constantly pushing into new markets, could not resist the allure of social media.

The network is called Ping, and has been described by Steve Jobs as “sort of like Facebook and Twitter meet iTunes.” Now that users have spent some time with it, we’re beginning to see a first wave of impressions. The verdict? Ping is nothing to write home about.

Katherine Boehret, in her Wall Street Journal review, called Ping “socially awkward.” While you can follow bands and other users, you cannot send messages, either publicly or privately. Ping does not notify you when someone comments on your posts, and offers no way of importing contacts from other networks. That last part alone could be a deal breaker, even without reports of rampant spamming.

Ideally, Apple would identify an opportunity to add value for customers, and design a service to deliver that value. But Ping seems to have been designed in reverse, capitalizing on the popularity of social networking to pull more revenue from the iTunes store (every mention of a band or song links to the iTunes storefront). The half-baked functionality points toward a lack of research about what users actually want from a social network, and what it needs to be successful.

That said, music lends itself extremely well to online socializing. With an already-faithful following of iTunes users, Apple could potentially become a significant presence in the social media sphere due to sheer brand loyalty. Of course, it wouldn’t hurt to look at some Facebook case studies.

Update:

Apple recently released some updates for iTunes and Ping. Users can now share music they’re listening to directly from their library, circumventing the previously tedious procedure of navigating to the Ping page. If Apple continues to make this type of improvement, users may begin to adopt the network more widely.

We are 140-character ideas. We are the pictures of your cat. We are blog posts about the economy. We are the collective knowledge that is Wikipedia. The Internet is a canvas, with which we paint the broad and fine strokes of our lives. It is a forward extension of our physical lives: a meta-self comprised of ones and zeros. We are all that is digital; if we weren’t, the Internet wouldn’t be either.

Taken by itself, this brief manifesto is vague and puzzling, yet somehow compelling. The existence of Diaspora, and its ambitious plans to become what some have labeled “the anti-Facebook,” is, in some ways, old news. It was covered by BBC News and The New York Times back in May, but as their summer work draws to a close, the four NYU students responsible for its creation report that they are a mere week away from releasing the social network.

But I should clarify: this release is not what you might expect. For all intents and purposes, the network will probably still be inaccessible to average Internet users. On September 15, the Diaspora project will release its source code to the public. That’s right — Diaspora will be entirely open source, giving users free range to scrutinize and modify the inner workings of the network, provided they have the technical know-how. Imagine Facebook doing that.

What this means is that those who adopt Diaspora will take social networking into their own hands, and no longer be subjected to undesireable privacy restrictions (or, for that matter, any restrictions at all). According to the Diaspora blog, an emphasis has been put on creating an “intuitive way for users to decide, and not notice deciding, what content goes to their coworkers and what goes to their drinking buddies.” Those worried about a complex interface can take comfort in a claim from the designers that they “have pushed back more technical features like plugins and APIs in favor of simple and high value features.”

Could Diaspora create serious competition for Facebook? While Facebook sports a lead of 500 million users, Dispora has leverage: a widespread dissatisfaction with Facebook, and demand for a viable alternative. Even the name “Diaspora” hints at this shift — a settlement of people away from their original homeland (read: Facebook). And while it may seem like a small detail to many, the fact that Diaspora will be open source spells a huge advantage over any commercialized social network. The collaboration and mutual support of an entire community with common goals holds enormous potential. The mention of Wikipedia in the above passage is no coincidence.

Because we haven’t seen a functional version of the network, it’s hard to say what exactly it will look like. However, the designers have written that they’re considering features like OpenID, voice over IP, and instant messanging protocol. When September 15 rolls around, we’ll be sure to keep an eye on Diaspora’s progress.

Special thanks to Megan Levi for inspiring this post.