Most of us internet people are so immersed in the culture we forget there’s a world outside of it, and that most of the rest of that world hasn’t heard of Twitter, doesn’t care what Michael Arrington thinks, they don’t have enough room for MySpace, or when they hear about Mashable, they think potatoes.
Chris Brogan has a great post covering People in the Real World.
One of the things I find entertaining in the land of web design where houses can be of any size, there’s this constant need to redesign, redesign, and redesign again (read the always popular “If Architects Had To Work Like Web Designers” for a perspective). I tell clients that a lot of small changes have a more positive impact on usability than a single massive redesign that can take months, because users are used to it and have learned how to use the current system within its constraints.
The reason there’s usually a redesign is the CEO usually comes down from the hallowed halls, and says, “we have to make it grey instead of yellow!” And grey it is (read: cnet.com).
Facebook is launching their new design this week to upteen million users (100 million or so, not counting my friend’s cat), and there’s going to be an uproar, and some grumbling, and then people will get used to the new site and stop complaining. Last time I checked, no one is actually paying for Facebook, so they can’t ask for their money back.
Looking at the numbers as reported by Mashable, it looks like adoption is not too bad — I’d be worried if there was a massive change back to the old platform, and that’s just not happening. In fact, I’d even go so far to suggest that Mashable might be spinning it a bit their way in a negative light because they don’t like the redesign. The petitions are at about 800,000 users, which means that there are probably about eight million very unhappy users, but that’s what, five percent of the audience?
Every site redesign I’ve participated in, I’ve seen the same trend. Sites almost never lose users because of a redesign, but it does slow site growth because when you do a redesign, there’s always a lot of bug fixing. MySpace has been going through a rolling redesign of their site, and other than some grumbling I heard from the teenset, there’s no petition there. In fact, that and the adoption of the platform has been very, very positive.
Or maybe the users there just don’t care.
I actually like the new site and some of the features (like uploading a profile photo) require tribal knowledge of driving through Boston’s streets to find the right screen, but overall I think it’s a move in a positive direction, especially since many of the newest features are occupying a space that both LinkedIn and eVite missed.
Facebook is becoming the defacto networking platform for professional groups. You can personalize your page quite a bit more, but still keep the Facebook look. And seriously, running two designs like they’ve been doing is a serious pain in the ass; last time I checked, one of the advantages of the web was one code base, yo.
Facebook has grown immensely over the years, and the application platform has created whole new opportunities for developers to abuse it, so gaining a bit more flexibility with the new design I think is a good thing.
Just try it, you’ll like it.
Facebook Navigation
MySpace Navigation
LinkedIn Navigation
Groups. All three of them have groups has major functionality, and none of the three have added groups as a component of the top or main navigation. Since all three of the services need advertising and page views to a certain extent, you would think each would try to drive traffic to groups.
My opinion? I think groups are underused; with the right approach, groups could be mini social networks upon themselves. For the services above, maybe they haven’t gotten there. But, if they could increase traffic in highly targeted and focused groups, why don’t they?
TechCrunch has a really good article about the FaceBook platform, one year later.
It’s a rather long article, so I’ll summarize for the reading impared.
The takeaways:
MySpace is actually doing a good job on limiting some of the issues that FaceBook never learned from — it’s not as easy to spam on MySpace because they are throttling the commenting and messaging — so being the second mover isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The applications are also a better fit for MySpace because it’s “teenager’s bedroom” nature of the design and user interface.
This is more or less in response to comments about the limits application developers are having to deal with in building for the MySpace platform. As outlined in a few posts that were out there during my vacation, some of the application developers are providing “incentives” to users to spam their friends through bulletins and the like. Seriously, it’s annoying, because some of the inboxes of accounts I have for testing over there are filling up.
After talking with some of the MySpace platform folks (I’ve designed some MySpace Applications, and was/still am involved with the developer platform yo a certain extent), it’s dramatically increased the amount of mail being sent through the system, and end users are complaining in a big way, because there’s been no stop to the torrent of messages from applications.
This is a message to the developers: if you want the applications to be viral, build great applications that people want to use and spread.
Buy Your Friends is a good application, but it was (and still is) abusing the system. Still, it’s fun, and they’ve done a good job spreading it. Offering enticements to get more people to install it is not the best way to play fair.
Somehow complaining about the rules seems pointless because MySpace’s objective is extend the platform, not extend the spam. They’re looking for developers to come up with great ideas that will turn MySpace into a better site and, in turn, generate more ad views. The whole point is to keep users there longer, and if it’s done with some of these applications, the objective has been satisfied. If there is an application that provides real value, they’ll give you a bit of leeway.
So far, it’s worked. They’re telling me that traffic is way up. You can also bet they’re also working on ways to share the wealth (I would at least hope so) so the application developers will go beyond the usual “poke me” applications and build something better. I know we’re working on better applications.
But somehow complaining about the rules being too restrictive because you are trying to take advantage of the system is the same as saying to a police officer, “hey, I know I was speeding, but everyone is doing it.” It’s not a valid complaint.
The point: Don’t abuse it if you want it around for a while, especially if it’s a free service.
The good news — building applications and promoting them through MySpace is now live.
The bad news — most of them appear to be as spammy as many of the FaceBook applications.
Some of the better mainstays of Facebook seem to have made it over, so it’ll be interesting to see how quickly people adopt them. Look for reviews as I play with each of the applications of note.
I have this standard joke because it’s my line of work, which really didn’t exist too long ago: “The internet’s a fad, it’s just going to go away.” While it might be dramatizing it, I do feel that it is if we don’t improve the user experience of applications and websites, like Facebook, so they aren’t just marketing spam. While end users may not be the brightest bulbs in the world, they’re not stupid, and they know when they are being fooled.
I like FaceBook. I’ve hired people off of FaceBook, and find it more useful from a profile standpoint (but less entertaining) than MySpace, but not as useful as LinkedIn. However, I had to do some housecleaning the other day, and I deleted over 100 applications.
Part of the problem is how most of these application developers design the applications, and nothing is a better illustration than what my online budy Andy Sternberg pointed out using an application on my own profile — that since I’ve installed an application, there’s this implicit “wow, Patrick must really like it.”
No, I don’t like it. My friends are selling me, and I’m not getting any of the profits.
A lot of these applications and even some websites, like Reunion.com (I’m not just bringing them up because I interviewed there years ago, but because I know the CEO knows better, and the David Lazarus of the Los Angeles Times also brought it up) are using shady ways to promote themselves, like harvesting friend lists and so on.
Note to application developers — if the applications are usable, engaging, and cool, people will use it in droves. They’ll tell your friends. They won’t worry about being forced to tell 10, or 12, or 20 friends. Facebook probably doesn’t know how it’s damaging their reputation, or if they do know, how to fix it.
That Scrabbulous application is engaging.
Texas No-Hold ‘Em Poker is engaging.
FriendFeed is engaging.
Selling friends is not.
I know this has been around for a while, but I still think it’s relevant — Mike Davidson does a great job of showing how to design an effective MySpace page. He also gives you a sample page to start from so you can customized based off of that.
Designing applications for the Facebook and MySpace APIs have been all the rage (and the newest way to spam). Most of them aren’t very good because the designers don’t understand the nature of designing a limited user interface application, and frankly, the execution of most of the ideas has been poor or non-existent.
I’ve worked directly with the MySpace API team and am currently designing the user experience of several MySpace Applications (probably more of them on the current list than anyone else).
Here are some guidelines for designing MySpace applications.
Patrick Neeman is Director of User Experience at Jobvite, a social recruiting platform and runs both the UX Drinking Game and Startup Drinking Game | More | Contact
