Unquestionably one of the most powerful ways in which products and services get promoted, word-of-mouth is not only notoriously difficult to generate; it's also very hard to measure. Pre-digital, finding out how 'talked about' your brand was meant arming yourself (or, more likely, a costly market research agency) with a pencil and clip-board and trying to find a representative sample to quiz, either by phone, mail or face-to-face. The arrival of email made contacting a large number of potential respondents much cheaper, quicker and easier but still relies on self-selecting individuals and only captures claimed, rather than actual, behaviours.
And then Google happened. For the first time, a small but significant slice of the world's interactions were being indexed and made searchable. The first tools to mine this data were somewhat limited in scope; Google Zeitgeist (launched in 2001) presented a small selection of top ten lists and charts of popular search queries, which tantalised the stats geeks amongst us with what could be discerned if open access to the database was granted. We had to wait five years, but in May 2006, Google did exactly that when it took the wraps off Google Trends, which enables users to chart trends for the search terms of their choosing.
Whilst knowing what keywords people are searching for is useful (and an important success measure in its own right), it doesn't necessarily directly correlate to how much your brand is being talked about. Fortunately, a new breed of products is emerging which focus on tracking keyword usage on blogs and in other community spaces. Icerocket's Trend Tool, Trendpedia, Technorati charts and Nielsen's BlogPulse Trend Search all attempt to trend word usage in the blogosphere, whilst the recently launched Facebook Lexicon collates keyword data from people's Facebook Walls and Twist charts keyword recurrence on Twitter.
The potential applications of these keyword trending tools are already myriad and my suspicion is that they are just the tip of the iceberg. Obvious next steps include mashing up the existing data sources to provide both aggregate and comparative trends across the various forums/services (e.g. Facebook users talk more about X than Y, whereas Twitterers talk more about Y then X) and beginning to contextualise the mentions to make more qualitative assessments (e.g. X % of keyword mentions were in a positive context, Y % were negative).
Below is a sample chart for each of the services I've mentioned, illustrating some of the interesting possibilities for this data in different market sectors.
Google Trends
http://www.google.com/trends
BlogPulse Trend Search
http://www.blogpulse.com/trend
Technorati charts
http://technorati.com/weblog/2006/01/77.html
Icerocket Trend Tool
http://trend.icerocket.com
Trendpedia
http://www.trendpedia.com
Facebook Lexicon
http://www.facebook.com/lexicon
Twist
http://twist.flaptor.com
Saturday, May 03, 2008
The word on the web: 7 keyword trending tools
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Beta invite giveaway
Thought I'd share some beta invite love. If any tickle your fancy, contact me with your email address via either Gmail or Twitter (fabricoffolly on both). And if you're interested in returning the favour, I'm still after a FFFFOUND! invite :)
UPDATE: FFFFOUND! invite now received (thanks Matt!) Will try and keep the below updated as the number of invites ticks down.
Fire Eagle
http://fireeagle.yahoo.net
Geo-location sharing service
Remaining invites: 0
Grooveshark
http://www.grooveshark.com
Music-sharing community
Remaining invites: 4
Iminta
http://www.iminta.com
Social aggregator / lifestreaming service
Remaining invites: 9
Livestation
http://www.livestation.com
Live TV & radio desktop player (PC only)
Remaining invites: 7
PMOG
http://pmog.com
Browser-based multi-player online game
Remaining invites: 2
Socialthing!
http://socialthing.com
Social aggregator / lifestreaming service
Remaining invites: 41
Encyclopedia Britannica offered free to "web publishers"
Neat idea from the Encyclopedia Britannica who must have finally got bored of only ever being cited as an example of how established business models have been undermined by the internet and the cost of failing to respond to that change quickly enough (see below chart for headline traffic comparison with Wikipedia).
The scheme is called Britannica WebShare and is described as "A special program for web publishers, including bloggers, webmasters, and anyone who writes for the Internet. You get complimentary access to the Encyclopaedia Britannica online and, if you like, an easy way to give your readers background of the topics you write about with links to complete Britannica articles".
I signed up (here) yesterday afternoon giving this blog's URL as my "Web Content Site" and by 10pm had received an email confirming I had been granted access. It's not 100% clear what their definition of a web publisher constitutes although the registration form has a disclaimer at the bottom stating "This program is intended for people who publish with some regularity on the Internet, be they bloggers, webmasters, or writers. We reserve the right to deny participation to anyone who in our judgment doesn’t qualify" and the FAQ advises that "If you go online and start a blog with one post just to get a free subscription to Britannica, we may say no".
In addition to unlimited personal access to the Encyclopedia, the WebShare initiative also encourages publishers to share the love by linking to individual articles which readers can access without being able to then move laterally through the site. So I can point you at this recently added article about Beck, which you can access, but to browse further you'd need to register for your own account.
They've also hopped on the widget bandwagon, offering embeddable 'clusters' of thematically grouped articles - below is their US Presidents widget (full list of available widgets here).
Whilst it may ultimately turn out to be too little too late for the EB, it's encouraging to see an 240 year old publishing company implement a fairly major rethink of its strategy and open up its content to the very people whose Wikipedia contributions have contributed to its decline.
My only criticism would be how poorly (if at all) the pages render in Firefox and Opera on a Mac. Sort it out guys.
Saturday, April 19, 2008
Social media as popularity contest
The results of Mike Butcher's 'who will be BBC FM&T king' poll on TechCrunch UK got me thinking about the extent to which popularity dominates behaviours around social media online, for, as Jemima Kiss intimates on the Guardian's digital content blog, the final list is more of a reflection of the relative online profile/popularity of people publicly associated with BBC Future Media, than an assessment of their suitability for the job in question. Which is fine and probably what you'd expect from a poll on a tech blog such as TechCrunch.
What's interesting to me though is how this overt popularity contest is an example of a much wider trend within online social media. Let's start with Facebook, where the number of 'friends' you have is not without consequence. As Robert Scoble pointed out at the Next Web Conference in Amsterdam, this is partially due to the fact that the quality of your experience on social media sites is, up to a point, determined by how many 'friends' you have (i.e. no friends and it's not a whole lot of fun).
However, at least for some users, the number of 'friends' they have has acquired a far greater importance as a signifier of their status or popularity. When Facebook was first taking off in the UK, I remember seeing a number of status updates (perhaps a telling phrase?) trumpeting the passing of a major friend milestone or bemoaning their inadequate friend count (although researchers were predictably swift to ascertain that "while people perceive someone who has a high number of friends as popular, attractive and self-confident, people who accumulate 'too many' friends (about 800 or more) are seen as insecure" (see Guardian article).
Of course, it's not just about raw numbers. The roll out of Facebook's developer platform enabled third-party developers to tap into the long-tail of people's popularity neuroses. It's no accident that amongst the most popular Facebook apps are Top Friends, Compare Me, Circle of Friends, Friends for Sale, Hotness and Best Friends. Compare Me is a particularly fine example, sending you regular email updates to inform you that you've just jumped two places in the sexiness rankings but dropped one against funniness or appending a list of your four most kissable friends...
Whilst the drive for popularity might be most obviously manifest in thoroughbred social networking sites such as Facebook or MySpace, it is also present, albeit less conspicuously, in sites where social objects (e.g. videos, photos, bookmarks) are nominally the focus. Similarly, the prominence given to 'number of followers' (interesting terminology again) in Twitter is instructive, as is the existence of services such as TwitDir and Andrew Baron's recent (abortive) attempt to auction his Twitter account (with followers, naturally).
Whilst on one level, social media's obsession with popularity is just a mirroring of the basic human dynamics at work in any playground or office, there's something about the measurability of online popularity which is particularly seductive. Whilst the social pecking order of a real-world group may be well understood, it is rarely made explicit, unlike online communities where public rankings are a stock in trade. The same harsh assessments of people's desirability have been silently taking place in bars and nightclubs for years but without the results then being posted up on the wall, as they are with online stalwart Hot or Not and its legion of imitators.
The trend certainly looks set to continue, not only because it taps into a very basic but powerful element of human psychology (ego!) but also because it adds a competitive and potentially addictive element to sites which consequently increases their stickiness and grows advertising revenue. Everyone's a winner! (except, that is, for the losers...) (Ok, I'm just bitter I didn't appear on the TechCrunch list ;-)
Photo: Shahid Sarker. Used under licence
Thursday, April 10, 2008
The mixtape reborn
A couple of weeks back, whilst visiting my parents, I ventured into the loft above their extension (basically a repository for all the crap I didn't want to bring with me to London after university but wasn't yet ready to throw out). In amongst the old computers, Whizzer and Chips annuals and back issues of PC Format I found a shoebox of cassette tapes, a good proportion of which were mixtapes, some from friends, some from ex-girlfriends, some of my own composition. Whilst I now lack the means to play them (having bid farewell to my hi-fi separates in a concession to the protocols of cohabitation), I couldn't quite bring myself to part with them just yet because of the instrumental role (no pun intended) that they played not only in my musical education but also in my emotional development during those formative years.
So, what's the modern analogue - sorry, equivalent - of the C60 mixtape? Well, if a couple of new startups get their way then it'll be the, er, mixtape...
Muxtape
http://muxtape.com
Only two weeks old, Muxtape is the brainchild of New York-based web designer Justin Ouellette and has been generating a fair amount of heat on Twitter and in the wider blogosphere. It's Flickr-esque both in its pared down design and ease-of-use, although it lacks some fairly basic functionality such as embedding and you can only upload a single 12-track mix against each username. Unfortunately it's real USP (allowing you to upload MP3s from your own collection) is also likely to prove its Achilles' heel once the copyright lawyers catch up with it. Here's my mix of 10 awesome tracks you probably don't own but should: http://fabricoffolly.muxtape.com - get it while it's hot there.
Mixwit
http://www.mixwit.com
Just one day older than Muxtape, Mixwit is hoping to sidestep the legal issues by pulling in its music from the wider web via SeeqPod and SkreemR (you can choose which to search via a dropdown). Whilst the catalogue of these search engines is potentially limitless, tracking down the exact version you're after can be a time-consuming and frustrating business and listed tracks are frequently 'no longer available' when you come to add them to your mix. On the plus side, your mixes (represented as a cassette tape, 'natch) can be visually styled and easily embedded. If Muxtape appeals to the geek elite then this one's more for the kids.
Other options include Mixaloo (which I reviewed in my latest round-up of new (to me) music apps) and the Fuzz Mixtape Creator (a.k.a. the Deck-O-Rator - no, really). Alternatively, if you're too lazy to pick the tracks yourself, why not make a request to the 'robots' powering the Tiny Mix Tapes Automatic Mix Tapes Generator or enlist the help of your friends using the Project Opus Mixx Maker Facebook app.
Sunday, March 30, 2008
22books
Many thanks to everyone who responded to my request for reading recommendations - I've just made my 185th Amazon purchase (!) and now have far more than a week's worth of holiday reading winging it's way to me from their Marston Gate warehouse.
A couple of comments referenced the pile of books I'd used to illustrate the post - whilst it does contain a few of my favourites, it was more of a reflection of the volumes that were nearest to hand (I have an annoying habit of evangelically forcing my most cherished books onto my friends who are then forced to use them as door stops / paperweights and smile politely whenever I inquire as to how they are enjoying them).
A while back I came across 22books - a modest little site "dedicated to the creating, sharing, and viewing of book lists". Created by James Avery, initially to detail all 22 of the late Kurt Vonnegut's published books (hence the name), the site is a little light on functionality at present, offering commenting and embedding and not a whole lot else. That said, I'm increasingly favouring single-function sites (e.g. Flickr for photos, Twitter for status updates) over the everything-but-the-kitchen sink, all-your-base-are-belong-to-us behemoth that is Facebook.
Anyway, rather than construct my list of favourite novels using the more obvious choice of Amazon's Listmania, I thought I'd give 22books a whirl. Unfortunately I can't get their embed code to work with Blogger so I've cut-and-pasted the list below (don't worry James - I've left your Amazon affiliate code in tact :) You can view the list in situ here.
22 of my favourite novels:
Monday, March 24, 2008
Bow Street Runner & We Tell Stories
I've been giving quite a bit a thought to games and the whole concept of play since returning from this year's SXSW Interactive, where Jane McGonigal delivered a barnstorming keynote on gaming and happiness (lovely slides, sadly mangled by SlideShare) and World Without Oil picked up the Activism gong in the 11th Annual Web Awards.
Whilst a more considered post on gaming and play gestates, below are a couple of established media companies making innovative use of game mechanics which have caught my attention over the past few weeks.
Bow Street Runner
http://www.channel4.com/bowstreetrunner
Produced by Brighton-based Littleloud, Bow Street Runner is an episodic Flash-based point-and-click graphic adventure commissioned by Channel 4 to accompany the five part TV series City of Vice. Set in Eighteenth-century London, the game seamlessly weaves together video capture with lovingly rendered backdrops and game objects to create a surprisingly immersive in-browser experience. Whilst a little too linear in structure (your progress through locations is predetermined and one-way), the concept of accruing esteem works well, as does the evidence gathering, which requires manual dexterity with the mouse/trackpad (most memorably to stitch up a stabbing victim). A new episode is unlocked every Thursday and a password is provided on completion of each episode so you don't need to replay them when returning to the game.
We Tell Stories
http://wetellstories.co.uk
A Six to Start production for Penguin UK, We Tell Stories is a six week project in which half a dozen established authors fashion narratives which aim to take advantage of the unique properties of the internet. Week 1 is 'The 21 Steps' by Charles Cumming, a homage to The 39 Steps which overlays a twenty one chapter short story onto embedded Google Maps, visually plotting the narrator's progress and unfolding the story one data-point at a time (including optional images). The next story (from one of my favourite authors, Toby Litt) is due tomorrow with the remaining four narratives appearing over the following four weeks. Of course, this being the brothers Hon, there's also a secret seventh story "somewhere on the internet" with the incentive of £13k worth of literary booty to be won.
Game on!
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Reading recommendations - the people vs. Amazon
I'm off on holiday in a couple of weeks (praise the Lord) and have started turning my attention to my holiday reading list. Whilst it's true that I have a whole bookcase of unread tomes (silently reprimanding me for how little time I manage to carve out for dead-tree format reading these days), I'm always on the look out for new recommendations, especially in the run up to an away break.
Whilst you might expect any self-respecting geek to turn to Amazon for literary pointers, I have to confess to being somewhat underwhelmed by their feted recommendations functionality. Sure, it's useful for directing you to other books by authors you've previously purchased or books in a similar genre, but it fails to deliver much in the way of genuine serendipity (I don't need a computer to tell me that if I liked Atomised by Michel Houellebecq then I might also like Platform by Michel Houellebecq).
Which is where you, dear reader, come in. Following on from the successful vote to determine which mobile phone handset I should upgrade to, I'm once again asking for your help - this time in broadening my literary horizons with answers to the following three questions:
1.) What's the best fiction book you've read in the last 12 months?
2.) What's the best non-fiction book you've read in the last 12 months?
2.) What's your favourite book of all time (fiction or non-fiction)?
Feel free to respond to some of all of the above questions either via the comments section below or on your own blog. I look forward to reading your recommendations.
Related fabric of folly posts:
The Long Tail by Chris Anderson
Divided Kingdom by Rupert Thomson
The Tortilla Curtain
Saturday, March 15, 2008
It started with a tweet - my Twitter epiphany
It's not something one readily admits to in the company of the geek elite, but prior to last week's South by Southwest I was something of a closet Twitter refusenik. Sure, I'd signed up along with everyone else back in 2006 and sent a few tentative tweets but I couldn't quite work out what all the fuss was about. Turning on mobile alerts didn't help and if anything, just cemented my view that it was an intrusive waste of time ('beep beep - X is having a sandwich' 'beep beep - Y is clipping their toenails'). Meh.
That all changed last week when Twitter played a major role in shaping my experience of SXSW. It started in Chicago airport when, waiting for a connecting flight, I exchanged Twitter handles with a bunch of fellow geeks, also on their way to Austin. Suddenly I was part of a mini community with a shared purpose and the tweets coming through felt super relevant and interesting ('X is talking in Room 8 right now and she's awesome' 'I'm grabbing some lunch at the Halcyon - anyone want to join me?').
Where previously I thought of Twitter as being like SMS or IM but more spammy, I started to see the benefits of its one-to-many format. It was possible to throw a thought out there, with people able to respond or not, without obligation - something which definitely isn't true of SMS or IM, where an unreplied to message usually goes down like a cup of cold sick. The beauty of apps such as Twitterific is that your friends' twittering becomes an almost ambient side-channel with you free to dip in a out as your time and interest allows.
Another interesting use of Twitter at SXSW was as a back-channel during the sessions, enabling attendees both within and without of a session to have a near real-time conversation about it (with well documented consequences in the case of the Zuckerberg keynote). Of course, the smarter session chairs pulled the back-channel up on screen so they could gauge the mood of the audience and respond accordingly.
Of course, Twitter isn't all joyous. Like any medium, it can be used for both good and not-so-good (someone should tell Doris Lessing, who somehow managed to get a Nobel prize without seemingly giving any serious thought to the medium/message blame equation). At the moment, however, the good far outweighs the bad and Twitter is shaping up to be a fascinating and complimentary new medium.
Tweet me @fabricoffolly.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Review of social aggregators / lifestreaming services
The difficulty in keeping track of one's activity on an increasing number of social media sites (Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, etc.) has, somewhat ironically, spawned a whole new breed of site - the social aggregator (a.k.a. lifestreaming services). Below is a review of 15 products currently in this space. I've tried to keep the focus on aggregators, rather than services which have more of an emphasis on inputting new content (e.g. microblogging platforms such as Tumblr or Jaiku) although the lines are clearly blurred.
Key to success in this area is minimising the work the user has to do to setup their aggregation. Scanning services against specified usernames (rather than adding each service individually) or automatically pulling in friend lists from the services added are both massive timesavers which lower the chances that you'll decide it's not worth the hassle and give up.
Another important factor in determining which aggregator is the best fit for you, beyond which services they supports (see comparison table at the foot of this post), is whether you want to keep track of your own activity, your friends' activity or a combination of the two. The below services all handle this in slightly different ways, both technically and presentationally.
1.) Profilactic
http://www.profilactic.com
Launched way back in 2006, Profilactic is the daddy of social aggregators, not least because it's notched up support for an astonishing 144 services. It also has a decent UI and some nice bits of functionality, including search and filtering of your 'mashup' (poor choice of label imo - too many other connotations). I also like the fact that it pulls in decent sized Flickr images rather than thumbnails, although I guess that's just personal preference and others may feel they take up too much space. Perhaps Profilactic's most compelling feature (now shared by newcomer socialthing!) is that it automatically draws on your friend lists from the services you add rather than forcing you to add them manually, which removes a massive barrier to take up.
Pros: number of services supported, search & filtering, large Flickr photos, automatically pulls in friends from other services
Cons: Lacks the design elegance of socialthing!
Features: 
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2.) socialthing!
https://socialthing.com
Still in private beta, socialthing! is a masterclass in the less-is-more school of interface design. The main page is filled with your 'Lifestream' with everything else tucked away behind a 'Settings' tab. Adding feeds is super easy and you can choose on a per-service basis who to share updates with (everyone, only friends or only friends on that particular service). There is also a checkbox to determine whether your friends' updates appear in your Lifestream or not (although they seem to appear regardless of whether I have this box checked, which I'm guessing is just a beta bug). The major drawback of socialthing! at this stage is the small number of services currently being supported, although that's likely to change as the beta progresses. I have 10 socialthing! beta invites to give away - leave a comment if you'd like one.
Pros: Sweet interface, iPhone-optimised version, draws on your friend lists from the services you add
Cons: Limited number of services supported, bug whereby friends' updates always appear
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3.) FriendFeed
http://friendfeed.com
Founded by a handful of ex-Google employees, FriendFeed is as spare and functional as you'd expect. It accepts feeds from 28 of the most popular social media sites and boasts a simple user interface with three main tabs (friends, me, everyone). Throw in a a decent Facebook app (which saves time by keeping your Mini Feed updated) and some nice extras (stats, recommended friends and, best of all, add an 'imaginary friend' to keep track on feeds from friends who don't yet have a FriendFeed account) and you're looking at a decent alternative to Profilactic.
Pros: good range of services supported, clean interface, decent Facebook app
Cons: feeds have to be added individually
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4.) iminta
http://www.iminta.com
iminta (strap line: what are you inta?) matches FriendFeed for number of supported services but doesn't quite match its simplicity of interface. It does however, offer some neat bits of additional functionality including the option to limit visibility of different feeds to different friends (via groups) and the ability to filter the stream by type (e.g. stories, events, videos) and/or by site.
Pros: groups, filter stream by site/type
Cons: busy interface
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5.) Plaxo Pulse
http://pulse.plaxo.com
After an inauspicious start, Plaxo seems to be back on the straight and narrow and rapidly gainly in popularity. It's Pulse component can accept feeds from an impressive 34 sites (second only to Profilactic) and you can choose whether to share updates with friends, family, business contacts or a custom group on a per-service basis. There's also a nice option to sync your Plaxo Pulse status with Twitter and a drop-down enabling you to filter the stream by type. The interface is more cluttered than socialthing! or FriendFeed, although it is trying to support a fully-featured social network.
Pros: Twitter-sync option, filter by type
Cons: Slightly cluttered interface
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6.) Readr
http://readr.com
Readr falls very much in the middle of the spectrum of social aggregators. Aesthetically, it borrows very heavily from Twitter, right down to the customisable wallpaper backgrounds, which is no a bad thing - the Twitter design works very well. Functionality-wise, it covers all the basics, including the ability to make individual feeds public or friends-only. However, it fails to make it into the top tier by not automatically pulling in friend lists from added services.
Pros: live update of your lifestream as you add services, range of embeddable widgets
Cons: Friends have to be added manually
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7.) Second Brain
http://secondbrain.com
Second Brain provides a clear and simple layout with some nice interface touches including speech bubbles for tweets and preview thumbnails for URLs bookmarked using del.icio.us. Unfortunately the finessed design isn't matched by the usability - adding feeds is a laborious process, involving lots of authentication and watching a spinning progress indicator, which other services seem to avoid.
Pros: Clean interface, search functionality, tags
Cons: Adding feeds is laborious, erratic feed updates
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8.) Soup.io
http://www.soup.io
Soup.io is visually very appealing, offering customisable 'skins' and pulling in large Flickr photos, Digg icons and full blog posts. It doesn't offer much in the way of additional functionality though and lacks much integration with your friends activity (beyond a link on the homepage).
Pros: Large Flickr photos and full blog posts
Cons: Limited functionality
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9.) Onaswarm
http://www.onaswarm.com
Visually very clean and simple, Onaswarm is another site whose functionality doesn't live up to the polish of its visual design. 'Calendar' sounds intriguing but turns out to be a blank page, whilst clicking on 'with friends' doesn't appear to present anything different to the individual view. It does however offer one very cool piece of functionality which is the ability to scan available services for specified usernames. I was thus able to turn up fabricoffolly accounts on multiple services by just typing in one word.
Pros: Good looking, scan services for username feature
Cons: Broken or opaque functionality
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10.) where is me?
http://www.whereisme.com
where is me? supports a relatively modest 13 sites but manages to cover off most of the big hitters. Adding feeds is a relatively straightforward process, although both Flickr & Twitter require you to look up and enter your ID number, which is a bit of a pain. Another minor frustration is that updates can only be ordered by service type not chronologically, so you don't get a true picture of your updates over time. One cool feature, which the other services would do well to emulate, is the ability to specify a tag so as to only show posts which match that tag.
Pros: per-service tag-filtering
Cons: can't order stream chronologically
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11.) liveZuu
http://www.livezuu.com
Matching FriendFeed and iminta for number of available services (28), liveZuu is let down by an esoteric interface which squeezes most of the interaction into a tiny portion of the screen and forces the user to adopt a trial and error approach to finding what they're looking for (it took me ages before I realised how to get to the fullscreen lifestream). It's a shame because the actual functionality is pretty good (although I couldn't get it to play with my Flickr feed).
Pros: Good range of services, Facebook app
Cons: Confusing UI
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12.) Superglu
http://www.suprglu.com
Superglu offers a blog-style presentation of your lifestream with main content updates down the left and a column on the right with recently listened to tracks, tags and month-by-month archives. Unfortunately the pulling in of the feeds seems a little erratic (no update on mine between the 12th Feb and 1oth Mar). There's also an issue with the image crashing into the right-hand column (see above grab). The good news is that Superglu does enable advanced users to manually edit the stylesheet (so I could go in and sort if out were I so inclined).
Pros: Manual CSS editing
Cons: Erratic updates, lack of friend integration
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13.) iStalkr
http://www.istalkr.com
The functionality of iStalkr is really not too bad but it's let down by poor design and UX, not least the fact that there is so much furniture at the top of the page (Google Ads, logo which isn't clickable, Digg icon) that the main event (the stream) is invariably pushed down beneath the fold. The user is just made to work too hard (why do I have to type in the name of the service? Why can't you do it and I'll overwrite it if it's wrong?). There are some redeeming features, including search functionality and an activities timeline (although the labels are often too truncated too be meaningful and the full description doesn't appear on hover), although they're not enough to counter the UX shortcomings.
Pros: Activities timeline, search stream feature
Cons: Sub-optimal design/UX,
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14.) correlate.us
http://correlate.us
correlate.us is the most lo-fi of the services reviewed here, employing a del.icio.us-esque design aesthetic and linking to photos and videos rather than pulling them into the data stream (or 'river', as correlate.us calls it). Only six services are currently supported (although they are some of the biggest hitters) and adding feeds can be a bit of a pain (to add last.fm you have to log in the last.fm site and temporarily change your country to Timor-Lest). On the plus side, there's an aggregated tag cloud and some basic stats on what number of posts are coming from which services.
Pros: tag cloud, basic stats
Cons: limited number of services supported, convoluted feed additions, doesn't pull media assets into stream
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15.) OneSwirl
http://www.oneswirl.com
OneSwirl didn't fair too well in my testing, returning MySQL database errors on the homepage (doh!). The only feed which I could get to appear in my stream (Twitter) wasn't very effectively presented (too spread out, necessitating a lot of scrolling) and the design looks very dated to me. In fairness to the developers, it's only been live for two weeks and they're clearly aware they've got some way to go with it. Casting around for a redeeming feature, I did quite like the inclusion of a calendar, enabling you to easily jump back to specific dates (although, of course, it doesn't work).
Pros: Er...
Cons: Database errors, not all feeds successfully updating lifestream
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Sunday, March 09, 2008
Fire Eagle points the way for online data services
One of my predicted Key technology trends for 2007 was 'Personal GPS/location aware applications', citing Plazes, Everytrail, Socialight, Dodgeball and Zonetag as early indicators of the trend. Turns out 2007 wasn't to be the breakthrough year, with all of the aforementioned sites failing to significantly grow their reach and Dodgeball withering on the Google vine.
However, it now looks like I may have been only a year out with my prediction as Yahoo!'s Fire Eagle (launched in beta at ETech earlier this week) has all the early hallmarks of a game-changer. So, what marks it out from the other products operating in this space?
1.) It's a platform rather than a building
The vast majority of web sites are still conceived as discrete products. They may have feeds in and out, but these tend to be seen as ways of enhancing or disseminating the main product. Fire Eagle, on the other hand, is a service in the truest sense of the word - it exists to facilitate other sites and services. Those who have been criticising Fire Eagle for not having a more fully-featured UI are missing the point - this is Tom Coates walking the talk re. the web of data.
2.) It geo-locates people rather than assets
By moving the geo-tagging from asset-level to person-level, Fire Eagle multiples the possible uses for that data. A geo-tagged photo is only really good for telling you where that photo was taken. Data from a geo-tagged person can be mapped against numerous other datasets to provide previously unimagined combinations of data. For example, correlating my Fire Eagle location data against my Last.fm listening data could populate a map of where and when I - and potentially others - listen to different tracks or genres of music.
3.) It has privacy considerations at its heart
Because Fire Eagle isn't trying to build an all-singing, all-dancing website to retain eyeballs it can instead focus on giving users full control over their location data. So often, user privacy settings feel peripheral or bolted on. Fire Eagle is all about letting you manage what level of detail you want to appear where, with an option to purge all your data should you so wish (Facebook take note).
Because Fire Eagle is effectively only a repository/broker of location data, it will ultimately stand or fall on the strength of the services which choose to integrate with it. The early signs are good with named adopters including Dopplr, Bug Labs and outside.in's On My Radar.
I have three Fire Eagle invites to give away - let me know in the comments if you'd like one.
Sunday, March 02, 2008
New (to me) music apps - part three
It's fair to say that since I made the move from BBC Audio & Music to BBC Vision (almost a year ago now), I've posted a whole lot less on audio-related stuff. As a result my del.icio.us feed is now brimming with interesting new (at least to me) unblogged music apps, so I figured it was time for another installment in this occasional series. Below are five apps which have particularly tickled my fancy in recent months.
Moody
http://www.crayonroom.com/moody.php
Moody is a small but perfectly formed desktop app (Mac or PC, although the Mac version is more fully-featured) which enables you to tag tracks in your iTunes library according to mood. The interface is a 4 x 4 multi-coloured grid with the horizontal axis representing a spectrum from Sad to Happy and the vertical axis ranging from Calm to Intense. So a track like Homesick by Kings of Convenience would most likley be tagged purple (bottom left - v. sad and v. calm), whereas Tubthumping by Chumbawamba would be tagged yellow (top right - relentlessly happy and intense). Arguably one for the Nick Hornbys amongst us as you need to put in a bit of tagging legwork to get maximum value out of it (it is possible to download other people's tags, although there's no saying their tagging criteria will match yours).
FIQL
http://www.fiql.com
What marks FIQL out from other playlist sharing communities is the recent addition of video, pulling in (mostly YouTube) videos to match the tracks in the playlist. Whilst its only ever as good as the tagging on YouTube, the random nature of the videos is strangely compelling - you never know if you're going to get an artist's official video or a bedroom cover version. Below is an embed of some of my favourite music videos of all time (see earlier post on Top 20 best music videos ever).
MeeMix
http://www.meemix.com
MeeMix bills itself as "Internet radio that gets you" and the homepage invites users to "start playing the soundtrack of your life, here and now". Soundbites aside, MeeMix is a decent personalised jukebox in the Pandora mold with a slick, if slightly cutesy, interface. You can create new stations by entering the name of an artist or track and then rate tracks using a Hot or Not slider. There's also a Mood Control panel with Pulse and Surprise Me sliders, enabling you to adjust the tempo and serendipity of the suggestions.
Mixaloo
http://mixaloo.com
Mixaloo is an online playlist creator, positioning itself as the digital successor to the analogue mix-tape. Users are invited to select between 10 and 15 songs (from a library of over 3 million) and then share/promote their mix (via a selection of embeddable widgets - see below) with the added incentive of a revenue share on any resulting purchases. Whilst 3 million tracks sounds like a lot, in reality the library feels frustratingly limited - mix-tapes by their nature tend to include more obscure tracks and Mixaloo's catalogue is decidedly mainstream. Still, it's nice to have an alternative to Apple's iMixes, with the added bonus that some tracks are available to listen to in their entirety (rather than just a 30-second preview).
Songkick
http://www.songkick.com
You wouldn't guess it from the name but Songkick is all about tracking tour dates for your favourite artists, which you can either enter manually via the site's 'Band Manager' or get automatically scraped from your music library by the downloadable Songkicker plug-in. Whilst it's potentially a bit of a one-trick pony, the site does offer an appealing alternative to sifting through multiple email updates from assorted ticketing companies (NB. Currently only covers the US and the UK).
Related fabric of folly posts:
Next generation music discovery
New (to me) music apps
New (to me) music apps - part two
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
BBC THREE reborn
Congratulations to assorted colleagues on the relaunch of BBC THREE, not only on-air (where the blobs have made way for user-created junctions - not to everyone's delight), but also online, where the site has been transformed from a rather static, sombre affair (above left) to something more dynamic and befitting the channel's target demographic (above right).
Five particularly cool things about the new site:
- live simulcast from 7pm every day (UK only)
- full integration with the BBC Programmes BETA (= a permanent page for every episode)
- it uses bbc.co.uk's new visual language (hence the extra width)
- it's got an innovative new Flash schedule, which expands whichever day/programme you click on to give you more information
- it's not an island, with sensible presences on Bebo, Facebook, Flickr and YouTube
Lots of people contributed to the redevelopment of the site but a special shout out to Jo Twist, Al Boley, Siobhan Mulholland, Yuri Kang, Simon Clarke, Oliver Bartlett, Beth Meade, Paul Condon and Venus Speedwell who all worked their socks off to turn it round.
You can read what my boss, Simon Nelson, has to say about the BBC THREE relaunch on the BBC Internet Blog.
Related fabric of folly posts:
Lily Allen take-away widget
Interesting times for the BBC online
Torchwood ARG
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Channel 4's Big Art Mob
More good web stuff coming out of Channel 4 in the form of Big Art Mob - "a collective effort to create the UK’s first comprehensive survey of Public Art" and part of the wider Channel 4 Big Art Project. Users are encouraged to upload photos (or videos), captured using their cameraphones and tag their location so they can be added to a national map. All the usual Web 2.0 staples are there including comments, Google Maps integration and tagging (though no ratings - presumably they decided art is above ratings). With the exception of some rogue HTML tags on the About page, it's a pretty slick implementation - the functionality of the take-away widget (embedded below) is particularly nice.
Related fabric of folly posts:
JPG Magazine & Picture This
Photo Friday
The joy of Creative Commons
Saturday, February 09, 2008
Is it ever ok for websites to start playing audio automatically?
A few years ago there seemed to be general consensus within the usability community that auto-starting audio on webpages was 'a bad thing'. A 2004 survey, quoted on Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox in an article entitled 'Most Hated Advertising Techniques', found that 79% of respondents answered "negatively" or "very negatively" when asked about online ads which automatically play sound. Of course, people get annoyed by most aspects of online advertising, however it wasn't just audio from ads which got people's goat, as this wonderful 2005 thread from an Apple mailing list demonstrates. The thread starts with a query from a web developer about how to add background music to their client's webpage but the discussion soon turns to why he would want to commit such a crime, climaxing with the immortal quote "Background music on a web page makes baby Jesus cry".
Fast-forward a few years and the debate has moved on. Gone are the conversations about the niceties of embedding a MIDI file as background music (thank the Lord). The main game-changer has been the widespread adoption of Flash streaming, precipitated by the growth of broadband and the unprecedented success of a certain video sharing website. Suddenly, every man and his dog is streaming in Flash and the issue of audio auto-start is very much back in play.
Leaving the technology to one side for a moment, the most significant impact of YouTube on the debate is that more and more webpages have A/V as their primary purpose. Auto-starting audio on a page where the media is the main event is potentially very different from a page where it is secondary or, worse, incidental.
That said, many of the same issues remain. A huge amount of internet use is office-based where not everyone has headphones and not all colleagues are likely to appreciate a sudden burst of Chocolate Rain. The growth in broadband has also meant more users will already be listening to audio whilst browsing the web (75% of broadband users have listened to radio whilst browsing according to the Radio Advertising Bureau). Another, slightly less obvious issue, stems from the growth in tabbed browsing (pioneered by Opera and Firefox and then thrust into the mainstream by IE7). Anyone who's opted to restore their tabs from a previous browsing session will most likely also have spent some time trying to track down which tab is responsible for the audio blaring out of their speakers.
I guess it ultimately comes down to user expectations. The web isn't yet at a point where users expect audio to play without their specific say-so. YouTube is a partial exception in that the ubiquity of it's brand promise means that most users clicking on a YouTube URL in an email or elsewhere on the web will know to expect video (with accompanying audio) to start playing automatically. Few, if any, other websites enjoy that expectation. I still feel surprised and annoyed when I land on a MySpace page and audio starts playing automatically. Even the websites of inherently aural brands such as radio and television broadcasters are not yet expected to auto-start audio (yes, ABC, I'm talking about you).
Whether or not audio auto-start will ever become wholly acceptable on the web is a moot point. Web-enabled devices tend to be so inherently multi-function that it seems unlikely that the expectation of self-starting audio will ever take root in a way it has with traditionally single-function devices like radio or television sets. Interestingly, the majority of online advertisers have cottoned on to user expectations in this area, favouring visually arresting but silent videos, with an invitation to users to switch on the sound.
Perhaps user behaviours will shift (I'm already in the habit of hitting the mute button on my MacBook whenever unsolicited audio would be disruptive) or maybe the technology will evolve to automatically detect the appropriateness of audio in any given situation (e.g. computer thinks: it's after 10pm which means the kids are probably asleep so I won't play audio).
I'm personally of the view that audio auto-start remains a no-no on the web. Any potential benefit (e.g. attracting more attention, saving the user a click) is offset by the annoyance it will cause to others, many of whom will be scrabbling for the Back button / volume control and vowing not to return to your impertinent little website.
Interested to hear what other think - please leave a comment or vote in the below poll. Having road-tested PollDaddy a couple of months ago, I thought I'd give Vizu a spin this time...
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Lily Allen take-away widget
Building on the success of Seven Ages of Rock's embeddable video and adhering to number five of the BBC's Fifteen Web Principles ("Treat the entire web as a creative canvas: don’t restrict your creativity to your own site"), I'm pleased to note the launch of the below take-away widget in support of Lily Allen's forthcoming BBC THREE show. The widget offers a choice of video, a form to register your interest in getting involved and an opportunity to vote on which of two bands get their UK TV debut on the show each week. The widget is also available as a Facebook app (natch).
Full terms and conditions
Also noteworthy is the way in which the programme's production process is being opened up to the public via a deliberately work-in-progress website (described by Lily on her MySpace blog as "a bit crap at the moment, but we'll be updating it more and more everyday, and it's going to be amazing soon"), a Production Blog (written by the team at Princess Productions) and a YouTube group (inviting users to upload stuff that will make Lily laugh).
It's going to be interesting to see how all of this new activity dovetails with Lily's existing online presences such as her official EMI site and her MySpace profile (473,000 friends and 10.7 million profile views at the time of writing...)
Related posts:
Why Seven Ages of Rock rocks
Interesting times for the BBC online
2007: the year of the widget?
Saturday, January 12, 2008
Personalised music magazine from your attention data
Thanks to Tristan for alerting me (via the BBC's Radio Labs blog) to the ultra-cool idiomag, which creates a daily personalised digital music magazine based on your listening preferences. The homepage invites users to enter either their two favourite artists or, more excitingly, their username from one of a host of popular online music services (Last.fm, Pandora, iLike, MyStrands, MOG, MySpace and Bebo are all supported) from where it pulls in details of your musical proclivities.
I opted for Last.fm as the primary custodian of my musical attention data and I have to admit that I found the resulting magazine pretty compelling. My first 'issue' served up