social networks
- to maximize the user-base, particularly to keep Twitter attractive to dissidents, protesters, journalists, and others whose use cases may involve sensitive or vulnerable action or information
- to maximize Twitter’s control over user-generated content (mostly individual tweets) and how it is consumed by users
The Perfect Empty Vessel
This is a good piece on how hard Facebook tries to keep the social juices flowing. Alexis Madrigal, commenting on Facebook’s designer-hiring spree:
As all these designers vanish into the bowels of the company, so, too, does their work. Facebook wants to create design that both allows and guides behavior without calling attention to itself. And what works in the Deep South must also work in southern India and South America. It must work for 16-year-olds and 86-year-olds.
I think this is the primary reason Facebook makes me uncomfortable: it’s too generic. Sometimes I want a service to be just a little in my way. I realize that you can’t generalize my preferences to hundreds of millions of people, but that just means I’ll never really feel awesome about using Facebook.
It feels like it’s been crafted as simply the most efficient way for me to send targeting data to advertisers…
…because it has.
MySpace renovations
Dear MySpace:
I am happy to see you lean away from Facebook and toward the new Digg and Rdio, with a clean design that prizes whitespace as much as content. Give me something functional and pretty, without the spammy taste of Facebook or the learning curve of Google+. Do this for me, and I will proselytize for you, even in the face of hopelessness.
Sincerely,
Joe
Twitter files appeal in major social media case
Twitter files appeal in major social media case
Jeff John Roberts provides an update on Twitter’s latest legal battle over at GigaOM. I think it’s fascinating that Twitter is living two lives:
They’re vigorously defending the rights of their users to maintain control over what happens to their tweets with regard to the government. They’re also perfecting a a cold hostility toward third-party developers.
These two strategies feel, for obvious reasons, very different from one another. But they are both directed at achieving the same two goals:
It’s a great time to be a Twitter user who is happy with the service’s in-house apps and undaunted by their increasing bloat. It is a very bad time to be someone interested in providing Twitter users with a better experience that Twitter itself is willing or able to do.
So.cl: Microsoft's social network, or search experiment, or kind ofboth, sort of
Users log in to the network with their Facebook or Windows Live accounts.
There are two reasons I can’t help but be cynical about So.cl, Microsoft’s latest social search experiment. I have no “official” user experience training, but both of my reasons might be considered UX critiques:
First, Facebook login suggests an interest in reducing friction, but my experience was anything but smooth. The So.cl page offers to let you sign in, so I tried to sign in with my personal email address but was told that address wasn’t connected to a registered Windows Live account. So I tried to register the same email address with Windows Live. Then, I was told it was already connected to a Windows Live account. I registered a different email address as a new Windows Live account and then got a landing page saying they’d send me an invitation ASAP. So much for signing in.
Facebook has its claws in Microsoft’s little social experiment, and it’s probably profoundly easier to use than Microsoft’s own sign-up/in process. Unfortunately, anyone who doesn’t have a Facebook account must brave Microsoft’s abysmal Windows Live process. No third way. This is a classic case of fail, and Danny Sullivan’s experience, which he wrote about at his Marketing Land website, suggests the problems I had trying to get into the damn thing only continue as you dig deeper.
Second, Microsoft did stuff it didn’t need to waste time doing: creating a stand-alone site and allowing users to: make “rich” posts (read: blog), “riff” on other posts (read: reblog, a la Tumblr), and conduct “video parties” (read: Google Hangouts, but with less features).
As usual, I have some unsolicited advice for a massive technology corporation:
First, let users sign up with an email address. If you want to make that email address automatically a new Windows Live account, fine, but don’t ask for ZIP code and gender while you do it. Don’t use multiple redirects to sign-up stages, either. Make it simple.
Second, just integrate the experiment into Bing.com itself, which looks better every time I visit it. Show users a very prominent one-time explanation and allow interested folks to opt into the experiment. Then, make the So.cl bits a minimal but eye-catching and useful sub-component of each search result or something. Anything but a distinct site. If it feels like a new feature, it’s not as off-putting as a stand-alone site, which can feel like a new hungry content monster users are expected to feed.
Microsoft has impressed many people with their design direction on Bing, as well as Windows 8 and Windows Phone (aside from the unfortunate fact that we’re still calling the last two things “Windows” at all). Simple user experience stuff like this though shows they still have much room for improvement.
For the record, one of my favorite user experience designs is ifttt. Show us what you can help us do and how to do it in the same step. That, to me, is an epic UX win.