New year, new decade. But we still haven’t gotten past everything Web 2.0. We’re still dealing with the consequences of the social media revolution. The question is, which side are you on?
Pull the brakes?
We’ve seen people dumping Facebook and still not getting the Twitter mania, but here’s something pretty recent: the Web 2.0 Suicide Machine is making the meme rounds for those who suffer from social networking overexposure.
Most of the time we just hop on the bandwagon, publish the smallest details of our lives with abandon, and regret our actions only when it’s too late. Sites like My Parents Joined Facebook and Lamebook capitalize on those slip-ups, and we’ve all heard stories of people getting fired for something they posted online. A clean break from it all could be the answer. Or an exaggeration.
Interestingly though, Facebook has blocked the Suicide Machine. Thanks for playing!
Shift into high gear?
Tina Roth Eisenberg a.k.a. Swiss Miss tweeted that her unborn son already has a “gmail account, 3 domain names and a twitter account”. Pretty sweet, I’d say.
Again, this isn’t really a new phenomenon, but not many people are looking that far ahead. After all, who knows what the Web will be like in five to ten years. If domain names will still be the way to access websites.
Or maintain cruising speed?
Most of us probably lie in the middle and won’t think to axe their accounts or be so protective of their online identities as though they were real estate. Even if your new year’s resolution for social networking isn’t anything drastic, it’s still important to stay on top of your privacy concerns and online persona. Have you tweaked Facebook’s Privacy Settings yet? How about all the authorized third-party apps that have access to your Twitter account? Do you Google yourself every once in a while to see how other people find and paint a picture of you?
Bonus: try integrating a workout into those beloved websites. Now there’s a productive idea.
Skittles on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube
Years from now, people will look back to the day Skittles ditched its flashy site and chose to load the top social websites that talk about it instead.
I can’t even begin to fathom how brilliant a campaign this is (despite being pioneered by Modernista exactly a year before). Maybe it’s not. I don’t know whether it’s so open-minded and fun, it doesn’t even look like a gimmick anymore or it’s just plain lazy to put the Skittles-related Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Facebook, and even Wikipedia pages right on Skittles.com.
The cynical
Why load tweets, photos, or videos if you can just pull them via the the sites’ ever-useful APIs and create a page that’s sprinkled with 100% more colors and candy? (Come on, don’t deprive web designers and developers of their jobs!)
Is it even legal for a company to load another company’s web page to promote itself? (But asking that is like saying Facebook owns whatever you post on its site, and we all know how that turned out.)
Is seeing yourself on Skittles.com enough incentive to build buzz about the product instead of the marketers who will be handsomely rewarded anyway? (A resounding yes if you’re one of those new media douchebags, but let’s get to that in a bit.)
Do these cynical questions even matter if you’re enjoying the experience anyway?
The self-absorbed
Skittles took a risk. Some other company would have been worried about the possibility of smack and smut polluting the streams.
It’s bound to happen anyway, if this campaign lasts long enough and the new media douchebags pounce on another pure phenomenon taking place. I think that’s what draws people to this experiment. It’s raw, unfiltered, and free from any sinister intentions. (At least to the naked eye.)
Remember when SEO hadn’t been invented? When Wikipedia was an unbiased reference? When Twitter was all about what you are doing right now? When your friends on Facebook didn’t have their own fan pages?
And what about the other side of that purity—the cold, hard, messy truth? Because it’s only a matter of time when Skittles, which is not just sweet, innocent, colorful candy, but also a huge corporation, rakes up some dirt in its dealings.
If there’s one thing to take away from all this is that if you’re a company and dreaming of pulling off something like this, it’s not about you. (Or maybe it is, but can you at least try to make it look like it isn’t?)
Any publicity is good publicity, order will emerge from chaos, and worry less about projecting a reality distortion field, focus more on making your product great, because it will speak for itself.
It all started out with a relatively small number of people who were curious about the “new profile” on Facebook. Apparently, it was supposed to tell your story much more effectively than the previous profile. Some of these early adopters learned, much to their dismay, that once you crossed over there was no turning back. Ah well. So much for reading the fine print.
I was one of those who, although somewhat intrigued by the new format, did not want to change because I already liked the way my profile looked. A few weeks later, well, what do you know? I was informed that the new design was being rolled out to me whether I liked it or not. A few friends who had skipped Facebook for a couple of days were a bit disoriented after having discovered the complete overhaul in the look of their profiles.
I didn’t really whine much because Facebook is, after all, a free service, and I never really trust freebies. To restate a friend’s wry comment, it’s “just like love, free but under certain conditions.” Nevertheless, it made me a bit cranky, because hey, I like my status updates right up there. I clear that space when I’ve got nothing to say, but when I do put something up, it’s because that’s what I want my friends to read, not those wall posts and links other people have added in my absence (no, I am not on FB 24 hours a day) that would otherwise push my status update down my wall.
Anyway, in the interest of understanding why Facebook has, once again, shaken us out of our comfort zones, let’s take a look at what has been changed and more importantly, why. A note released by one of Facebook’s employees attempts to explain these.
The new profile features:
- A quick summary of who you are (like where you live, work and grew up), right at the top of your profile
- A row of recently tagged photos so friends can see what you’ve been up to lately
- Room to highlight meaningful friendships (like teammates, co-workers or roommates)
- More of your favorite activities and interests
- The ability to tag your friends in important life experiences
I have to admit, the row of photos at the upper portion of the wall did appear somewhat stylish to me, UNTIL I realized that these were tagged photos and NOT profile pictures. Instead of snapshots of me with my friends, I could see photos of birthday calendars, items being sold online, and other inane things that I’ve been tagged in but really don’t want on my wall. There’s an option to remove pictures from the lineup, but really, do you want to spend your time clicking away, removing all of the tagged photos you don’t like?
Boxes for applications have also been done away with. Now I can’t really say I was crazy about those. In my opinion, they made pages look a tad cluttered. I do wish we still had more control over the “About Me” field. Reading about where a friend works just doesn’t interest me as much as seeing more personality on people’s pages. If I had wanted to know about employment specifics, I would have clicked on the tab for that sort of information, anyway.
In any case, the new profile design is here and it’s here to stay. Facebook hasn’t shown signs of succumbing to public clamor, so it’s either we live with it or bail out. Personally, I’m keeping my account because the new design isn’t going to kill me and Facebook is still the easiest way for me to stay in touch with my networks. Still, I’m not sure about the new look. It doesn’t seem to accomplish all that much for me, which makes me think that the new look isn’t providing the kind of function preferred by many (if not most) users.
Amidst all of the annoyed/irritated/violent status updates and comments complaining about Facebook’s new profile design, let’s try to be level-headed here. What do you think about the new look after having had a few days or weeks to get used to it? Is the purpose for the change clear, and is Facebook successful in tying up their supposed objectives with the preferences of the public?
Photos via facebook.com
As Facebook grew bigger and bigger, so did the issues surrounding it. Perhaps one of the biggest issues that the giant social network has always faced is just how secure it is. Left and right, we continue to hear about privacy issues, and how users have a lot to fear in this regard.
Recently, however, founder Mark Zuckerberg gleefully announced a host of new features that they are rolling out – features that are supposed to ensure the privacy of Facebook users. One would think that this just might put an end to all the concerns – NOT.
Even more recently, news about several popular Facebook applications giving away private information to advertisers. Zynga, the group behind the ubiquitous FarmVille and Mafia Wars, and LOLapps are among the platform developers that have been earmarked for the privacy breach. The official statement is that the leaking of private information was due to “technical details,” and that everything was accidental. Did we really expect them to say otherwise?
To give credit to Facebook, they admitted the breach, and say that they are taking steps to address similar issues coming up. Then again, isn’t this what press releases are for? Are the guys at Facebook really taking serious steps to solve security issues? Will the new features actually make access more secure for the average user?
Here are some of the new features that are supposed to make this so:
- Ability to remotely log out of Facebook: “Under the Account Security section of your Account Settings page you’ll see all of your active sessions, along with information about each session. In the unlikely event that someone accesses your account without your permission, you can also shut down the unauthorized login before resetting your password and taking other steps to secure your account and computer.”
- Temporary passwords: These are to be used when accessing Facebook in unsecure locations. “Simply text “otp” to 32665 on your mobile phone (U.S. only), and you’ll immediately receive a password that can be used only once and expires in 20 minutes. In order to access this feature, you’ll need a mobile phone number in your account.”
Check out Jake Brill’s blog post for more details.
As for the effectiveness of these features, we will just have to see in the coming weeks and months. Personally, I haven’t had the chance to use them!
Photo via pcworld.com.ph
Tumblr is no longer just the home of reblogged pictures, quotes, music, videos, and journal entries of friends you follow; it’s also gaining favor with the more discerning content creators in the design and technology circles, turning it into a truly professional publishing platform. This phenomenon is thanks to its relatively easy customization while keeping its interface decidedly simple.
My question is, if Tumblr’s audience is becoming more mature, should it shift from its dead-simple appeal and grow up too? David Yeiser prefers its current approach:
What’s neat about Tumblr is it’s not only a great publishing platform but a great tool for content consumption. [...] as self-publishing has changed to shorter forms and varied media the traditional feed reader has become obsolete. I shouldn’t have to click a title of a post to read a quote. [...] I think the way Tumblr aggregates and displays blog posts is the future of feed readers. Though I’m not aware of any standalone readers that take this approach.
Personally, I disagree. I follow a lot of people (and non-people) on Tumblr, producing remarkably varied content genres (e.g. XKCD Explained, 53 Weeks of UX, Sweet Home Style) with no way of filtering which ones I’d like to view at a time. Infinite scrolling in the dashboard can only take you so far in browsing ease.
Unwieldy content consumption is a familiar problem experienced on Twitter and Facebook, and by people who want more options, more control. Except there are now methods of dealing them on those sites. It’s even a big business for third party companies. On Tumblr, that remains to be seen.
Dashboard filtering options would be a welcome addition to the site. The reason is that “following” is a one-size-fits-all option when the truth is we need many.
And there lies the rub with a hosted platform, as well as platform that caters to simplicity first and foremost. Notice that as the concept of feed reading, trackbacking, and commenting are abstracted, if not replaced with Tumblr’s own conventions of dashboard reading, reblogging, liking, answering, one is forced to adhere to a closed set of standards inside its community. For a community that’s got such a wealth of content, consuming and sharing and communicating through that content but with limiting, non-standard methods is a turn off. If I link to a Tumblr post from a non-Tumblr site, will the owner of that tumblelog even know that I did?
Again, all of this wouldn’t be so bad if there were more options available, even as premium features. Right now, there aren’t.
What should Tumblr do? Should it go the WordPress.org and Identi.ca route and provide an open, self-hosted platform? Should it take some notes from the old-but-still-strong LiveJournal? (In some ways their user bases are the same.) Should it push its API more aggressively? Should we just wait and see what they’re up to, or accept that it’s really just a different culture from what we’re accustomed to?
As someone who’s enjoyed a lot of great content on Tumblr and is tempted to migrate her personal blog over there, there are a glaring number of things holding me back.
It’s not just about net neutrality or privacy anymore. Our future internet could be the very opposite of what it is today—free—specifically due to companies dominating their markets and the constant push to simplify the user experience.
Tim O’Reilly predicts a war is coming, one where we are at the mercy of the internet giants like Google, Facebook, and Apple: they stop making the services we are so highly dependent on interoperable.
It could be that everyone will figure out how to play nicely with each other, and we’ll see a continuation of the interoperable web model we’ve enjoyed for the past two decades. But I’m betting that things are going to get ugly. We’re heading into a war for control of the web. And in the end, it’s more than that, it’s a war against the web as an interoperable platform. Instead, we’re facing the prospect of Facebook as the platform, Apple as the platform, Google as the platform, Amazon as the platform, where big companies slug it out until one is king of the hill.
Chris Messina fears something similar as well: the death of the URL, as new formats for delivering web content are abstracting the website-going experience and letting ourselves relinquish control.
By removing our ability to navigate, choose, and share freely — these app stores are exchanging our freedom for a promise that they’ll keep us safe, give us everything we need, and do all the choosing of what’s “good enough” for us — all starting at ninety-nine cents a hit.
I know that if we always look at things with a worst case scenario in mind, we’ll never get any work done from here on out. But better to worry now than when it becomes impossible to undo things. I like how the Web is now, no matter how chaotic and crap-filled it can be.
That said, if the URL disappears, I know few people would be troubled by it, and an overhaul of the system may be needed anyway.
And as for the giants bullying us into a corner, it makes me wish the Long Tail would stand a chance.
There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with using social media like Twitter and Facebook to get people to participate in contests, but Cameron Moll’s nickname for the recent Authentic Jobs contest does raise an interesting point.
You won’t win through frivolous activities such as retweeting, posting a comment, or Facebookery. You’ll win by actually using Authentic Jobs in a way that benefits you. Use the site to set yourself up to find a job or land some freelance work anytime between now and December 4, and you’re automatically entered to win.
The contest makes its participants discover the product it’s promoting. Sure, retweeting and refacebooking to win prizes does spread the buzz, but if you’re confident enough in what you’ve built, it will do the talking. And so will its satisfied customers on Twitter and Facebook.
Plus, it helps to have fabulous prizes at stake.
Does your insanely brilliant product have to shun the marketing machines of Twitter and Facebook? Of course not. But you can always be a little more creative with your promotions, can’t you?
I don’t think that Simler will be a Facebook or Twitter killer, but there are several features that interest me enough to not stop thinking about it. (That’s gotta be a good sign right? Knowing how that went for Twitter?)
- Instead of reading and discussing topics with your friends because they are your friends, Simler lets you find the topics (tags) that interest you, so you can consume and create content under them. You could say it’s a reformatted message board or chatroom, so is it really a new thing?
- The tagging concept keeps me on the fence as well. I like the idea of trying to define yourself with these keywords, but the novelty wears off when you realize it’s not much different from the way we list interests in virtual profiles and slambooks. And what does it mean when I add the IE6 tag to my profile? It definitely does not mean I like using it! What about the “Awkward Silence” tag? Eventually it will become a race to see who comes up with the wittiest name.
- I’m not sure it will actually scale. Will there be a way to organize the tags a user collects as time passes? Surely some people’s egos will find anything less than a thousand tags to be insufficient to describe their interesting selves. Then again, the Twitter era answer to that is: when there’s an API, there’s a way.
Simler poses interesting questions regarding how we pursue our interests on the Web. Do you join groups because your friends are in it? the cool kids are in it? or because you’re interested in the discussions? Are you tired of the insipid updates filling up their live streams? Should you take a more active role in choosing the content you see? Is the level of control for doing so enough?
Jacob Gube of Six Revisions has compiled 30 visually-stunning sites which are all formatted like virtual business cards. Tim Van Damme, whose dot-com of the same name sparked this trend, also maintains a list as well.
There’s little else on each page except a rectangular area found dead-center, filled with icons representing the tons of new ways we can be contacted, befriended, stalked. We have the Web 2.0 era and all the insanely creative social media icon designers to thank for this phenomenon. (Sometimes blogs and other related sites are linked to in these cards, but who has time for those anymore?) If you don’t have the chops to whip up your own, services like Card.ly come to the rescue.
But that’s just the visual side of the metaphor being brought online. Business cards are meant to be exchanged because of the information they contain, so what good would these sites be without technological mojo? We have great frameworks like vCard, hCard, and perhaps the open identity systems like OpenID and oAuth. We also have companies working in the mobile space or have devices of their own (more here).
Then there are the lifestreaming apps, like FriendFeed, Tumblr, and chi.mp, which blur the lines between keeping one’s social accounts in one place and keeping up-to-date with said person at the same time.
How does one unassuming professional looking to establish an online presence actually choose from these possibilities? Social media evangelists pretty much recommend we get on everywhere, as many as and as much as we can help it. The goal is to be ubiquitous rather than obscure.
I have to wonder when we’ll ever reach true unification. Home phone. Work phone. Fax. Mobile phone. Email address. IM handle. Static homepage. Blog. MySpace page. Facbeook profile. LinkedIn profile. Facebook Fan Page. Twitter username. Then this—all of this.
How do you identify yourself offline and online? Do you pick one, or unload a bunch of URLs, aliases, and digits on your potential new client/drinking buddy/love-of-your-life? Is this whole business card business even a suitable metaphor, or yet another idea startups can cash in on? And we’re not even bringing up identity theft here.
Just about the time it’s become almost trivial to create rounded corners, Facebook suddenly decides to go back to its originally boxy, “razor cut” look. In the announcement, the Facebook design team reveals its priority:
Since we introduced rounded corners to Facebook, their consistent use has been spotty at best. The corner radii vary, and it sometimes feels arbitrary which corners are rounded and which are not. Additionally, they add an extra layer of complexity to the code (note: IE, please add support for border-radius).
As part of the effort to simplify our visual style, the design team recently decided to go back to our square corner roots. In doing so, we hope to champion cleanliness and the razor cut look that Facebook is known for.
That’s choosing consistency over the popular choice to go with rounded corners just because it’s a recommended design pattern. Not everybody would have the guts to do that.
Heck, it takes guts for Facebook to keep tweaking its interface, because at each turn it’s spurned so many protesting groups that keeping track of which one is against which feature becomes futile. For all we know, new groups protesting this rollback will surface yet again.
But Facebook always knows what it wants, it seems, and always sticks to its guns. Given the current design trends—from “Web 2.0″ gradients, candy colors, large fonts, and rounded corners, to Apple-inspired interfaces, to the highly detailed grunge and Victorian textures—would you, as a hypothetical head of the Facebook design team, have come up with something like its current look? Or would you have changed it? Save for the already-gone rounded corners, people wouldn’t have pegged this site for a spawn of the Web 2.0 era. It didn’t feel the need to look like one. Its features already spoke volumes.
Let’s talk feature redesign. The most controversial one so far, which put the status updates on the homepage, has also redesigned the social networking design pattern as a whole. It’s not just a copycat of the Twitter or FriendFeed (which it just acquired) interface, but emergence of the Real Time Web had a lot to do with it.
Back in the glory days of MySpace and Friendster, Facebook had a chance to copy its ability to ultra-customize profiles with custom CSS and background images. And there was a time when FB’s apps messed up profiles that things almost looked as horrible as any MySpace or Friendster page, but Facebook once again swept in and prioritized consistency. Over total freedom.
Facebook always seems to be choosing the unpopular, unconventional path, but it’s now the most popular social network on the planet, and the 3rd most popular site in the world second only to Google and Yahoo! They must be doing something right.
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