Comments | Comment

All of the opinions below are mine and only mine.

On top of everything else happening in the social space (Google Buzz, everyone leaving MySpace, Facebook changes), this happens: Facebook Patents The Newsfeed. You can read the full copy of the patent here.

Now before we all have a “What the hell moment,” here are a few things to remember:

Some patents are virtually unenforceable.

Various companies have patented the shopping cart, the GIF image, the one-click purchase and the affiliate program. The one-click purchase made Jeff Bezos look like a fool for a while, especially after they went after Barnes and Noble.

If you haven’t noticed, none of the above are really enforced except for the GIF image patent, which there’s “sometimes” a $5,000 licensing fee. Unisys at one point threatened to go after every website that had a GIF image somewhere on the site.

That was popular.

A few patents, like the one-click purchase and the affiliate program, have given rise to protests and eventual defeat of a lot of the claims Amazon had over the business process. Most of those patents are violated every second of the day because they are  ubiquitous and so mainstream there’s no way to enforce them.

Some patents are more for defense against large competitors.

While it doesn’t make sense for Facebook to sue everyone, I’m sure they’re thinking about what they can bring up against Google, MySpace and a few other large properties with a newsfeed.

Other places are probably thinking about how to re-architect their solutions now to avoid any patent infringement. That said, if you’re running a site that isn’t one of the top 1,000, I don’t think Facebook is going to be sending a lawyer your way anytime soon.

Some patents are for getting money out of people and for increasing market value.

One of the few points people forget about Google is that the concept of AdWords wasn’t invented by them. It was patented  by GoTo.com. I’ll admit that Google does it much better than GoTo/Overture ever did, but it was enough of a threat that Google eventually settled with Yahoo!, who had purchased Overture.

The lawsuit against Google related to its  AdWords service. In February 2002, Google introduced a service called AdWords Select that allowed marketers to bid for higher placement in marked sections – a tactic that had some similarities to Overture’s search-listing auctions.

Following Yahoo!’s acquisition of Overture, the  lawsuit was  settled with  Google agreeing to issue 2.7 million shares of  common stock to Yahoo! in exchange for a  perpetual license.

That patent was probably one of the reasons why Yahoo purchased Overture. There are holding companies whose purpose is to hold patents. However, they are selective about who they sue because lawyers are expensive. It’s an ROI equation, and there’s no point going after someone without money, right?

GigaOM says:

Friendster, which was  recently bought by a Malaysian company, made much of the fact that had obtained five U.S. social networking patents, at times using the patents to scare off the competition, at least  in the press.

Scary.

Some patents are declared invalid.

The U.S. Patent Office grants a lot of patents. It doesn’t necessarily mean they will stand up in court.  Gibson Guitars has been on a rampage, suing anyone that produces music simulation software like Guitar Hero. Read more here.

They have yet to win.

What would happen if Facebook went after MySpace in court, and the patent was declared invalid?

What if a single social network invented before Facebook had the same implementation, and Facebook was in violation of the intellectual property of that website? Would that company win $500 million like when Microsoft was sued over the browser plug-in?

GigaOM points out:

The patent is particularly valuable because news-feed style communication has become pervasive since it was launched on Facebook. However, it's not clear that there aren't precedents for the technology; for instance, the social network  Multiply.com had a similar interface for keeping track of friends' actions before Facebook launched its own.

Mutliply.com suing Facebook? That would be fun.

What next?

As big as a deal as this may seem, it isn’t until they do something with it. For now, it’s just another asset they have in the universe of Social Media.

 Comments | Comment

I would have never thought of this.

 Comments | Comment

 Comments | Comment

No. Way.

 Comments | Comment

Google guesses who your friends are, including your mistress that your wife doesn’t know about – and then shows everyone.

This is such an inexact science, because anyone can figure out your email address. We receive so much spam and other garbage through email accounts (is a shopping site really my friend?) and there are conversations you want private. Those connections are now public by default, as Gizmodo points out:

• A girl you slept with in college sends you a message on Gchat, to tell you she has five beautiful children now, and she doesn’t ever think about you, ever. Ok!
• You exchange some messages and a couple of emails to be polite. You defuse the situation. You don’t mention it to your current girlfriend, because that would be weird.
• Coincidentally, you enable Google Buzz, which adds both your current girlfriend and this lady who you politely deflected.
• Your girlfriend checks out your Google profile, sees your friends list and asks you who that lady is.
• You clumsily try to explain, “Oh, it just adds people you talk to automatically,” which only makes things worse.
• Fight!
• You break up, which was probably a good thing anyway, because your relationship sounded really unhealthy. But you get the point, right?

The situation is so bad, some sites, like Lifehacker, are showing ways to turn off the contact list. Think about it, do you want every telemarketer to be your friend?  Facebook has one important filter: you can deny friend requests.

It’s never, ever a good idea to create a social graph the way Google did. That’s why most of the IM clients do the double opt-in approach. The follower model is killing Twitter.

Google Buzz reinforces the power law online, which means you’ll get to see 100 photos backdrops of Jason Calacanis’s dog or promoting how he pays more than some services, but less than About.com for content

The people you want to talk to automatically become long-tail, yet the people who are endlessly self promoting always bubble to the top because they have 11,000 followers. Someone’s always going to make a comment.

Social Customer points out Buzz does two things that will simply make it unusable.

1. It shows threaded conversations and strongly highlights the initiator of those conversations and makes the comments subservient to the initial post.
2. It takes posts that have “new” comments and immediately bumps those posts to the topmost position of the viewing window.

This interface will greatly reinforce the existing  power law relationships online and have the effect of greatly reducing the serendipity and interest in things like the current Twitter and Facebook interfaces.

Not that many people use Gmail and most who do are the digerati.

From instyleprom:

This is also the first time I’ve noticed how few of my friends actually use Gmail. I  love Gmail and recommend it to everybody, but people are often quite set in their ways and prefer to stay with Hotmail or Yahoo, irrespective of the lack of features. Looking at my address book, I’m guessing probably less than 20% of my friends have a Gmail address or even a Google account, for that matter.

Yeah, it’s mad, but it also means Buzz is already limiting my network.

Social networking is an all or nothing game; and if you only have 20 percent of your friends, do you really think the other 50 percent or so are going to create a Gmail account to see Google Buzz?

I think not.

What’s the take away? Not ready for primetime.

I agree with twittercism:

My gut feeling? Unless they make some major changes and improvements to Buzz soon, and that includes addressing those privacy issues, it’s never going to be a threat to Twitter or Facebook. It’s just another aggregator, and a bad one at that.

Everyone sees Facebook as the center of their social graph. They also see Google as the place that wants your information, which is why people won’t trust them with their social graph.

What do you think?

 Comments | Comment

I know the guy posting this (Brian Salzman), and this is a great position. If you are looking to break in the field, this is a good place to start.

IBM in Costa Mesa, CA has an opening for a paid user experience intern. We are looking for students to start early in 2010 and to work for at least six months. We do not offer summer internships.

IBM interns join multidisciplinary product development teams to design, prototype, and evaluate graphical user interfaces for IBM’s industry-leading database, business intelligence, and content management products. Interns collaborate with user experience colleagues in Silicon Valley and around the world.

Applicants should have some combination of the following skills, experience, and personal characteristics:

Technical and Professional Skills

• Ability to learn new technologies quickly
• Familiar with graphical user interfaces and style guidelines
• Knowledge of User Centered Design methodologies
• User interface design experience
• Prototyping experience
• Usability evaluation experience
• Strong interest in Human Computer Interaction (HCI)

Software Experience

• Software applications for Windows, UNIX or LINUX
• User Interface prototyping tools (Visio, Axure, Visual Basic, Photoshop, etc.)
• HTML, XML or Javascript
• BASIC, C++, Java or other programming languages

Essential Characteristics

• Adaptable and dependable
• Highly motivated and a self-starter
• A good communicator
• Works well in teams
• An innovative attitude

Education

Internship candidates must be enrolled in a degree program —  Preferred candidates will be pursuing a graduate degree with an emphasis on human-computer interaction (HCI). To be competitive, candidates should have HCI coursework and user interface design experience (class projects OK).

Send a resume and cover letter listing HF/HCI courses, programming/prototyping experience, and user interface design experience to:

Brian Salzman
Email: jsalzma@us.ibm.com

 Comments | Comment

Stephanie Bergman is a Social Media and Product Management consultant friend of mine. She’s very sharp, a good compass of where to go. Here’s her opinion of the iPad, and you can find her blog here. And yes, I’ll have my own opinion.

Earlier today, Apple announced the tablet computer the world has been waiting for. And it isn't quite a tablet or a computer. It's more of an entertainment device – a "third category" as Steve Jobs put it – and one I don't really think the world needs.

I've never been really excited about the idea of a tablet, so I was biased from the start. A keyboard is pretty essential to me for anything, I type very fast and have no patience for anything that slows me down. That said, I was still curious to see what Apple was going to do beyond making a really big iPod Touch. I mean, this is Steve Jobs, I expect to see a paradigm shift, a massive step forward, a change in the way we do things. That's where I'm disappointed.

The iPad is a big, expensive ($499 for the cheapest version without 3G), iPod touch.

The positive – there are going to be people who will love this thing (other than the usual Apple fan boys/girls). It's gorgeous, and if beautiful design is your thing, you're going to love using this. It's a nice entertainment device, a decent size to watch television on, iPod, and a good ebook reader. If someone doesn't have access to a television or other computer, this could fill that gap. Maybe someone with roommates or college students. Business folks will also love whipping this out in a meeting to do a presentation. Assuming, of course, that they don't mind presenting in Keynote. It's also going to open up an entirely new world of computer gaming as people innovate with the touch screen interface. Someone who travels a lot would like this as well (battery life is reportedly around 10 hours) – so long as they don't mind using the screen to type, or carrying another laptop/netbook.

There definitely IS a use for this. I simply don't think that now is the time for it. It won't replace a computer – you can't run Word or PowerPoint on it, you can't even do something as simple as keep AIM open while surfing the web – and it isn't a phone either. No camera, no GPS, no keyboard, no Flash. How many programs are you running on the machine you're reading this post on? You couldn't do that, it's clearly not intended for work. This would have to be complimentary, an entertainment-focused device in addition to a computer and phone and a television…and that's where it loses me. The costs don't work out.

I'm not the average user, I know that. I have an iPhone, iPod, Netbook, Kindle, and Macbook Pro, and they all have different uses for me. I rarely watch videos online, that's what the Roku and TiVo are for, and I like being able to curl up in bed with a kindle without having to worry about touching the screen or it rotating. I have absolutely no use for the iPad, it doesn't offer me anything at all beyond what I already have.

Then there's a name. Immediately after the presentation was over, the word iTampon was trending on Twitter. The name iPad was not. The jokes are never going to end (in fact, they started years ago), and it gives me crazy giggles to think that there's an iPeriod app for the iPad.

The bottom line is – there is nothing revolutionary about this. It's pretty, it's cool, I'll absolutely drool over it when I see it, but that's about it. If any other company had announced this, I would have shrugged. But it's Apple – I expect innovation, and there's very little.

Oh well. But hey, it's first gen. I'll wait until next year for the brain implant.

Congrats, this is the 500th post on Usability Counts.

 Comments | Comment

 Comments | Comment