Image Credit: http://opengardensblog.futuretext.com
As the popularity of blogging, social media and open source development continue to explode, widgets are taking root as a mainstay of the online social experience. The interdependency of self-publishing, social media and open source platforms are ensuring that widgets, those bits of code that allow us to aggregate, publish and share a wide variety of different content/information in one place, are here to stay. In fact, the rapid growth in online cultural trends like lifestreaming, microblogging and social browsing is creating increased demand for ways users can pull information from a diverse array of profiles and information sources, aggregate them and publish them quickly and easily. Said simply, widgets help us glue the web together, and as online social ecosystems become more complex, and as web sites and web based applications rely on more underlying services, widgets will prove to be a core component of the self-publishing culture and infrastructure.
For all of these reasons, we can estimate that companies will continue to throw a lot of time, money and energy at creating widgets and widget-like applications that online goers want to use. That said, not all widgets are created equal, and only the very best widgets spread (which is the whole idea). In this post I want to explore what makes a remarkable viral widget and offer developers some design tips…
#1 It’s Not About You.
Widgets that are perceived as ads rather than tools lose, plain and simple. Widget design should always be about the publisher/user and their content. Developers can put a small trademark on it, a link back to their service and a “grab this (for yourself)” button, but that better not be the focus. Subtlety in marketing is critical. It’s easy for developers to get excited about building an “ultra viral” widget that promotes the heck out of their service and brand, and it’s natural to want to put their mark in a prominent place that steals the show. Big mistake. Widgets that win put the user’s content front and center. Self-publishing isn’t like fashion. There are no label whores. Users want to highlight their stuff, not yours. The moment a reader sees a widget, interacts with it and THEN thinks “can I get one of these and do this myself?” is the point that they’ll start looking for a trademark. That moment should be the first time they notice your marketing. Viral is about the utility of the tool, not the marketing.
#2 One Size Fits Few
If you think you can make a popular one-size-fits-all widget these days, you’re dead wrong. The one-widget-for-all model is dead. More and more amateurs are diving into code and are customizing their blogs and social profiles in all kinds of different ways. People know that creating a unique web site design is key to blogging and online-social success. Radical individualism IS the norm when it comes to web design. For that reason, users want widgets that fit in a variety of spaces to fit THEIR unique design, so make it easy for them to get what they want. Developers should consider designing an easy to understand installation wizard that allows users to easily create a widget of any size they chose TO THE PIXEL, no matter how wacky. Flexibility will win out over standardization. Maybe even offer a few shape-formatting options. Help them look good and they will love you for it. You’ll be sewing the seeds of evangelism.
#3 Make It Customizable & Reflective of The User’s Personality
Personalization and being different is everything on the web. Widgets need to fit that trend. Give the publisher every facility you can to personalize the widget so their instance of it is different than any other user’s instance. This could be as simple as letting them select a fixed color scheme OR as complicated as pulling the user’s account data in from other services (for example, FriendFeed’s feed widget pulls delicious tags, twitter updates, Flickr photos etc all into one feed).
#4 Dynamic, User-Created Content Increases Engagement
Giving people tools to make their site(s) more engaging should be a primary goal of every widget developer. A lot of developers out there seem to forget this, which baffles me. Good widgets are useful tools for the user FIRST and branding for the developer a distant second. Users should see an obvious value proposition when they ask themselves “How can I use this to enhance MY brand/message/content mix?”. On the flip-side, readers who engage a user’s widget are asking “What does the information this widget delivers say about the author?” If the answer is “nothing”, reader engagement completely vanishes and wont return. You only really get one chance to convince a reader that your widget is something they should pay attention to (and might want for themselves). If they decide that it’s not, readers will simply remember that the widget is there, and that they should ignore it and skip to primary content. Ad blindness works the same way. It’s the developers job to turn a widget into a node of interaction, and the way to do that is to allow widget users to create and display THEIR content with it. When readers see fresh streams of dynamic, user-created content in a widget, they’ll remember it, return to it and interact more.
#5 Make It Simple Stupid and Easy To Maintain
Simplicity of installation is just one part of the challenge. Making a widget easy to maintain is the other. To keep a widget engaging, a user needs to keep creating dynamic content, which is not easy these days given the complex array of things we do online in any given day. Developers need to be sensitive to the fact that most people who blog and use social media are dying for simplicity – many have too many accounts and use to many services to manage it all consistently…the time and effort required to add yet ANOTHER widget (and new behaviors) that they need to manage will (in most cases) lead a user to decide against joining your widget community at all. Widgets that win will allow users to create content by doing the things they already do. For example, a widget that showed the most recent items in my Netflix queue would update automatically as I updated my queue in Netflix, and not require any additional work on my part. AdaptiveBlue’s widgets are a great example of this.
#6 Individualization and Community
One last point before I wrap up. Widgets often represent a user in a greater community – sometimes they act like a badge that identifies the individual as part of a tribe (think mybloglog). Although I’ve discussed above how making a widget personal and customizable is important, developers should also remember that if a widget is about community building, allowing users to highlight their affiliation and status within that community is also very important. People don’t want to just stand out from a crowd, they want to belong to your community. Let them show that affiliation proudly.
In short, the above are just some thoughts I have on building great widgets based on my experiences and observations. What are yours?
Twitter is one of the most powerful community building tools available today for two reasons – simplicity and transparency. With the right tools and techniques, you can use Twitter to find people who are like you and share your passions, and build strong networks quickly, effectively and cheaply. The ability to form tight networks in this way is almost unprecedented, and is one of the main driving forces of the Twitter Revolution. In this post I will discuss tools and techniques for using Twitter for effective personal networking and building a tribe, not for using it as a marketing tool.
For People Who Want To Use Twitter as a Marketing Tool
There are several ways to use Twitter as a tool, and they require fundamentally different mind-sets and strategies. If you wish to use Twitter is a marketing tool (that is, to decentralize your efforts and get your message out to as many people as possible, quickly) there are tons of posts already on the web that are great resources for you. Here are some of the best that I’ve found from a couple of Twitter superstars:
- How To Use Twitter As A Marketing Tool, by Guy Kawasaki – Easily Some of the best advice on the web about how to develop a large following quickly and getting the word out about your brand.
- How To Grow Your Follower Numbers To Over 10,000 in a Week, by Darren Rowse of ProBlogger – How to effectively create a marketing campaign that generates a large Twitter following fast.
- How To Get More Followers On Twitter – a link Roundup by Darren Rowse of 7 great articles that focus on growing your following.
For People Who Want To Use Twitter For Personal Networking and Building A Tribe
Effectively building a personal network with Twitter requires a very different mind-set than the ones covered in the posts above. Doing it in the right way requires you to take a long term approach, to be discerning about who you spend time connecting with, to let go of the “you need 10,000 followers NOW” approach, and to focus and target your efforts on connecting with the right people in order to create deeper and more meaningful relationships. Remember, effective networking is about building a tribe/community of people who trust you, believe in your message and actively engage you and your brand.
Networking Isn’t About Broadcasting A Message, It’s About Creating Relationships
There’s a great video clip on YouTube (included below) where Seth Godin answers the question “Is Social Networking Important For Business?”. I’ve transcribed his response because it perfectly illustrates the difference between networking that works and networking that doesn’t. He says:
“There’s two kinds of networking. There’s the networking of giving your business card out to lots of people, showing up to lots of cocktail parties, friending a lot of people on Facebook, counting how many people follow you on twitter. That’s worthless. It was worthless in the real world and it’s worthless in the online world. The networking that matters is helping people achieve their goals. Doing it reliably and repeatedly, so that over time people have an interest in helping you achieve your goals, ’cause they have a stake in it.
You can do that offline
You can do that online…by leading a tribe, by connecting people, by giving people access to the information and resources they need. Because then over time, they’ll do the same for you. You’re not doing it for the punchline. You’re doing it because the act of doing it is so beneficial.
What I really don’t like is online is the superficial networking, that all the thousands of people are [doing]…friending everybody else…why? Right? That doesn’t count for anything. It’s just a waste of time.
With Seth’s words in mind, I’ve crafted the rest of this post to provide answers and insights to deeper questions that people who are concerned with personal networking should be asking themselves, like:
How do I find other people like me, who care about the same things?
How do I find and connect with authorities and influencers?
How do I determine who the most important people in an influencer’s network are?
How do I become an authority/influencer myself?
How do I build and lead a tribe?
Excited? Here we go…
How and Where To Find People Who (Are) Like You
I want to make one quick point before diving in. The brackets in the heading above are purposeful. When we say I like you, most of the time, what we’re saying is I am like you. One of the most rewarding things about taking part in social media is finding and connecting with people who you (are) like, and who (are) like you. The surest way to quickly build a tight-knit online tribe is to find like-minded people and engage them. Being online is a lot like meeting up face to face. People who are like each other, connect with one other a heck of a lot quicker online than ones that don’t. Chemistry and mutual interest come out in text too, even in 140 character chunks. You can form faster, tighter connections with people you are like because you share passions and interests, care about the same things etc etc. People who are like you are everywhere, and being able to identify those connections and use them to your advantage to network effectively is key.
Doing this well takes some up-front work on your part. The key to finding people that are most like you is that it requires you to take a good hard, honest look inside yourself. Ask yourself what are the things you really care about? What are you passionate about? What communities are you already a part of that focus on those things? If you try and discuss things you’re not that into, just because you want people to think that you’re into them (for whatever insecure reason), you’re going to have a tough time with building and strengthening your tribe. People will figure you out quickly and you’ll come off as disingenuous. Being authentic is the web’s #1 rule. Becoming an authority and leading a tribe requires you to take a long term view and concentrate on topics you love for months, even years. So figure out who you are, find your voice and then project that consistently.
Fortunately, if you have an internet connection and a browser, you already have free access to every tool you’ll need to find people who are like you, you just have to know where to look. Here are some of the best.
1. Twitter’s Search Function
This is the best place to start when you don’t know where to start. It’s easy. Pick a topic you love, and hit search.twitter.com. It’ll show you all the people that are talking about that topic in real time. The more targeted your search keywords are, the more likely you are to find what (or who) you’re looking for. For example, I’m a blogger and web designer and I love Wordpress. “Wordpress themes” is a good keyword phrase because people don’t talk about Wordpress themes unless they’re bloggers. A search on this phrase is going to find me bloggers who use the same platform as I do. I instantly have something to connect with those people over. You can do this with any topic, but target your keywords to search for activities and things you love, software or platforms you use etc. Searching on keywords like “vacation” isn’t necessarily going to find you a hardcore traveler the way that “backpacking” would. As soon as you hit search, see who’s talking, find a conversation you like, follow that person and jump right in.
*Tip: If you consider yourself a power-user and want to kick the search up a notch, you can also use Monitter, which provides a Tweetdeck-like Twitter monitoring service.
2. Take Advantage of Existing Community Clusters
People gather around experts, companies and services; They listen to and learn from experts, and get news from companies and services they care about. For example, people who are interested in venture capital probably follow high-profile VC bloggers like Fred Wilson, Brad Feld or Guy Kawasaki. Likewise, users who follow Wordpress’s Twitter stream are likely to be bloggers who use Wordpress. Finding these experts and services that talk about topics and news that you are interested in is the first step. Once you do, find the cluster of people who follow them – you can access these lists for free at the top right of any Twitter account’s home page. Think of them as qualified leads. The more nichey the expert, service or company, the more targeted the audience that they’ve drawn will likely be.*
*Tip – avoid following services or companies you find in a follower’s list – these users are following only to get noticed and will not add value to your network. They may reciprocate, but it’s a dead node that will probably never interact with you or anyone from your community.
3. Use Contextual Networks (Social Browsing) To Find People Like You
One of the web’s most useful social networking tools for finding and connecting with people like you is Glue. Wired recently called it “the single most useful social networking tool [he's] ever encountered” and it’s one of Read Write Web’s Top 10 Semantic Web Products of 2008. Glue integrates seamlessly with Twitter and allows you to network with people around objects (like books, movies, stocks etc) as you browse many popular sites on the web and you can easily post your interactions directly to your Twitter stream. The guys over at AdaptiveBlue have done a terrific job with Glue, and they are about to roll out some new conversational features that will make the service even better. I’ve written a long, very detailed post about the benefits of using Glue to network with people and how it works with Twitter, so I won’t spend too much time on it here. I’ve found it to be an indespensible tool that should be in every Twitter user’s toolkit. (If you’re already on Glue, you can find my profile here)
Below is a video that gives a brief overview of some of the main features of Glue.
Glue Overview from AdaptiveBlue on Vimeo.
How Do I Find And Connect With Authorities And Influencers (In My Niche)?
The Twitter revolution has given us more opportunity than ever before to find, follow and engage influencers and authorities. There are dozens of services on the web now that use Twitter’s API to access rich, searchable data that lets anyone sort through the clutter to find out who matters and who doesn’t in the Twittersphere (for any given niche). My favorites are:
Twitter Grader – This is one of my favorite “find’em and friend’em” services. Not only does it give you a variety of useful statistics on your own Twitter account (authority, rank etc) it allows you to search for other users world wide for any keyword or location and ranks them by authority. Need I say more? It’s not always clear how twitter grader calculates power and influence, but this is a great starting point to find influencers by niche and geography.
Twellow.com – The Twitter Yellow Pages. Twellow’s website is not quite as slick as Twitter Grader’s but their search function works almost as well and allows you to search by keyword AND location simultaneously, which is a powerful, unique feature. Like Twitter Grader, it returns user results by authority score and gives you instant access to a lot of user profile info like websites and bios. These guys get a hat tip because they’ve done a lot of the work of finding users by topics and categories in a yahoo directory-like way. Need a realtor in your area? Need a web designer? Twellow’s a good place to start.
Mr Tweet – This guy’s gotten a lot of press for good reason. MrTweet’s Service will analyze your network, suggest good people and followers you’re missing out on, recommend influential users to you and update you regularly with stats on your account. The service currently has close to 70,000 followers on Twitter. While MrTweet’s service is valuable, I wouldn’t suggest using it until you’ve been on Twitter for a little while and accumulated a substantial following. Because the data is based on your existing network, the more existing connections you have, the better the results will be. Also, the popularity of the service gives it some cons. The results won’t likely be instant. My request sat in a queue for 4 or 5 days before I got the analysis results back. It’s worth being patient, though. You’ll likely find lots of good people to follow that you wouldn’t have otherwise.
The three services I’ve mentioned above are, of course, not the only ones available to you. There are dozens. The three above are just the ones I use most. Here are some other notable services that I’ve come across that deserve honorable mention:
- Web Analytics Demystified’s Twitter Influence Calculator, Top 100 Twitter Users By Influence and Twitter Cloud
- Twinfluence.com
- Twitseeker.com
- Twitterank.com’s Top 50 List
- Retweet Radar
How Do I Determine WhoThe Most Important People In An Influencer’s Network Are?
Now that we’ve covered how to find people with the most authority and influence on Twitter, let’s dig deeper. Building strong networks isn’t just about finding authorities in your niche, it’s about leveraging their networks too. Here are two great ways to gauge who the most important people in an influencer’s network are:
1. Dig For The First 20
Did you know that Twitter logs people you follow in chronological order? That means that the very first person someone ever followed will be the very last person you find in their “following” list. Use this to your advantage. Even when an influencer follows thousands of other users, find their first 20. Those are likely the people that the influencer cares most about (and likely knows well offline). No one starts following randomly when they first create a Twitter account. We always start with our favorites (people we already connect regularly with) when we first started using a service.
2. Use Social Network Analysis and Social Graphing
If you really want to go hardcore to find out exactly who matters to a Twitter user, check out Mailana’s social network analysis tool for Twitter. It’s the most advanced tool for this around – way better than anything anyone else has come up with so far. You’ll get detailed statistics on the top 20 people a user messages the most (including DM’s which arent public), as well as a social graph you can use to analyze the users social network. The tool, of course, isn’t perfect because it’ll only show you the people that the user communicates with most, but the two techniques I’ve talked about together will give you a great overall picture of who matters. Here’s a snapshot of Pete Cashmore’s social Network, just so you can get a preview of what the tool does:
Final Thoughts: How To Build Your Tribe and Become An Influencer…
Finding people with whom you have a lot in common and proactively engaging them on Twitter is the first step. Becoming an authority requires you (as Seth Godin said) to consistently help them, refer them, set them up with each other, teach them and give them access to the information and resources they need. But more than anything, it requires you to cement deep(er), long(er) lasting relationships with people based on common interest and cause. This is why building a tribe requires a long-term mind-set. True fans aren’t made overnight. This is THE LIE that gets bought into way too much on the Internet. Superficial friending is useless if you’re trying to develop a strong personal network (of people who would actually be of use to you offline). With that in mind, here are three thoughts I want to leave you with:
Be Consistent and Relevant – To be viewed as an authority, you have to consistently communicate relevant and useful information/help/resources to your chosen area of expertise. Remember, you’re building a personal brand. If you’re connecting with people who love Wordpress, for example, Tweet about that a lot. Pretty soon, you’ll become known as a go-to guy. Using targeted information resources like Alltop.com, popurls.com or news from top blogs in your niche to find and aggregate and link to news is a fantastic strategy for developing a consistent, credible voice that people respond to.
There’s No Substitute For Making Offline Connections – I can’t stress this enough. Services like Meetup.com are excellent for finding people on Twitter who get together offline and organize events around mutual interests. Find those groups, join them and attend the meetings. You’ll be glad that you did.
Always Be Linking – Tweetbacks are like trackbacks on blogs. When you consistently link to interesting, relevant resources that your tribe cares about, you show up on those blog posts! Be consistent and people will start recognizing you everywhere as they read. Linking in your twitter posts also establishes credibility and shows your community that you keep up with news they care about.
Here's a 4 step hack for people who want to be able to protect their Twitter Updates and still use Twitter to update their Facebook status.
Read More
The web is evolving rapidly and it’s nice to see that social networking is evolving right along with it. If you frequent top tech sites like TechCrunch and ReadWriteWeb, you’ve probably heard (or read) the term “Semantic Web” hundreds of times this year, but in this blogger’s humble opinion, all the hype and hoopla hasn’t produced much that most of us can actually use, especially not in the social networking arena. Until now. A New York-based tech startup called AdaptiveBlue has just released a FireFox browser add-on called Glue that just might turn traditional social networking on its head. In my estimation, Glue’s release represents a significant leap forward in social browsing and is likely the first of many semantic technologies that will begin changing the way people connect and have more meaningful interaction on the web. Here’s just a few reasons why Glue is a game-changer:
Semantic Technologies (Can) Put Our Networking Activities In Context
One of the key insights that Glue was built on is that the things we like and the content we consume say as much about us as anything else, and that connecting over things and content we love with others is meaningful and enjoyable. With Glue, AdaptiveBlue has built a contextual network that uses semantic technology across the web to automatically connect people around the everyday things they are interested in – books, music, movies, celebrities, artists, stocks, wine, restaurants and more. Here’s the awesome part…because the network is decentralized and distributed across popular sites using the AB Meta Markup, it doesn’t matter when or where the users visit things, Glue recognizes the object and connects people around it. For example, Glue recognizes a particular movie (like IronMan) as the same object on IMDB, Amazon, Netflix, RottenTomato, Fandango etc. and treats it the same way. If a friend on Glue interacts with that movie on any site using the AB Meta Markup, that interaction will show up on any other compliant site for that object in Glue. There is no destination site, the network is always in the user’s context anywhere they are interacting on the web. Here’s a quick video that illustrates exactly how Glue works and how it builds networks of people around objects:
Glue Overview from AdaptiveBlue on Vimeo.
Glue Blends Simplicity and Portability
If you’re an avid online social networker you’re aware of just how many social networking, tagging and microblogging platforms are out there. Most of us don’t have time to respond to voice mail and e-mail every day, let alone check our Twitter updates and Facebook accounts and Flickr friends. Simplicity is key. The beauty of Glue is that it doesn’t force you into a one-or-the other decision when it comes to the suite of services you use, and it doesn’t force you to build a new profile on a new site. Rather, it adds value to all your existing services by allowing you to dynamically build a portable profile as you browse the web that loads (for other Glue users) on all of the sites that you claim in Glue seamlessly. You don’t have to change your habits at all. The value here is that every Glue user that visits any of your sites (your blog, your Twitter stream, LinkedIn profile, Flickr strean etc) sees the Glue bar, adding variety, and context to every profile without you having to do anything but claim a page. For people who are into lifestreaming, this is a major value-add. Plus, it gives people an easy way to find all of your content on the web. The profile provides quick and easy hop links to all of your sites with just a few clicks. Here are a couple of screenshots of my various profiles around the web (you can see that the Glue bar shows on all of them)
Providing Meaningful Filters For People And Things
After spending a few months on Glue (in private beta), what I’ve found the most interesting is that I can use people as filters for (finding and analyzing) things and use things to help me filter and analyze people. The biggest problem I have when I interact with people I’ve never met on text-based platforms like Twitter or FriendFeed is that for the most part I’m doing so with very little personal context. The biggest frustration I have with social media in general when it comes to meeting new people is being able to answer one big question “What is this person like?”. Glue is awesome for giving someone’s suite of profiles “a common personality” because it rides on top of all of their profiles (as discussed above). Here’s what I mean…
Let’s say I find a guy named “JoeTweetalot” on twitter. All I know about Joe is that he’s got a short bio on his page that just says “I live in San Jose, I work at a software company and I’m awesome. DM me!”. Doesn’t really tell me much. BUT he’s on glue. Right on! So his profile drops down and I surf his stuff….now I know that Joe is interested in these things:
“Office Space, SuperBad, FightClub, Oceans 11, The Laws Of Simplicity, Click, Crowdsourcing, The Numerati, Radio Head, Hendrix, 24, Prison break, iPhone, Apple Laptop, and 5 Popular Sushi restaurants in Soho”….
The stuff I can see in his Glue Profile acts as a great filter for his personality – I already have an idea of what Joe’s sense of humor might be like, I can guess his approximate age, I know he’s interested in similar topics as me, and his music and food tastes are also similar to mine. It says instantly “do I have stuff in common with this person or not?” Which is the most frequent question I have that rarely gets answered on the social web. Being able to share a bit of ourselves in this way allows us to find more meaningful connections with others and allows us to connect over the things we love.
Final Thoughts
With any luck, we’re going to start seeing smarter technologies for social browsing and networking that provide better context and meaning to our interactions online. Glue is the most noteworthy of such smart technologies available to date. While still in its infancy, the service represents a significant advance in how people can use semantic technologies to pull their many services together (meaningfully) and find new ways to find each other and connect over shared interests. The novelty, simplicity and portability of Glue is a major plus in such a cluttered social networking world and shows us the way forward. But don’t take my word for it…try it yourself. Get Glue.
Lately I’ve been feeling overwhelmed with information, so I’ve started taking steps to trim some of the fat from my info-diet. Along with reducing the number of people I follow on Twitter, and using Facebook’s new feed features to help focus my news to people I care most about, I’ve also made one significant change in my feed reading habits by making a switch from my traditional feed reader to iGoogle’s new widgetized interface. Here’s why the new features in iGoogle rock my world…
Finally, A Dashboard That I Can Scan
I probably track around 100 blogs in my RSS reader, and by most measures, I think that’s a modeset number. Do I read every post from all of those blogs? Of course not. Nobody has that kind of time. Like everyone else, I’ve got 15-20 favorites that I track actively and the rest get lumped into the “You Have 687 unread posts” category. Still, with a traditional RSS feed reader, I’ve had to dig through my feeds on the left, expand them and scroll through posts.
No More. Now I use iGoogle’s dashboard (as my browser’s homepage) to keep up with my favorite blogs RSS feeds, friends, email, facebook…all of it. I now spend a fraction of the time reading that I did a week ago. Everything you add to iGoogle shows up as a draggable widget, so you can design your own layout, organize your stuff into tabs, and it’s all right there on your home page. The dashboard design makes keeping up a heckofa lot easier because it makes the content scannable (FINALLY!).
I won’t bore you with all the details of how to set it up, because it’s a snap, and besides, a picture’s worth a thousand words. Here’s my current iGoogle home page…
iGoogle Dashboard Widgets Add Extra Value For Social Networking
While adding tabs on my iGoogle Dashboard the other day, I stumbled on an awesome new feature. I created a tab called “Friends” and it automatically populated the tab with Facebook functionality, GoogleChat and Gmail widgets. I even added a twitter gadget. It’s nice to know that the good folks at Google are accurately anticipating their users wants and needs. Here’s another 1000-word screenshot. How useful is this??!!
The fact that Google is figuring out that people need a good agreggation service for all their feeds (beyond just RSS readers) is awesome, and I think the new iGoogle interface is an indicator of changes to come with how feeds are organized and presented. Here are some final thoughts…
Design Makes A Difference To How People Consume Information
I’m a big believer in the idea that design shapes behavior. The fact that design impacts reading behavior is the reason that magazines and newspapers invest so heavily in layout, typography and graphic design. This is a no brainer, right? I know I’m not saying anything innovative here…so why haven’t companies like FriendFeed and NewsGator innovated with the design of their layout to improve readability? It’s all so…linear. Linear design is fine (and even elegant) until you start pulling a lot of different types of content into one stream. FriendFeed in particular has gotten so useless to me, that I don’t even bother with it anymore – Tweets, photos, bookmarks, comments…it’s all there in one big no-context pile that you have to sort through. I quit trying a while ago because it’s just too overwhelming. I know I’m not alone in this. Why doesn’t every profile have a dashboard of all their stuff sparated out for readability? It’s all coming in separately, so why lump it all together ina long time line and make it less useful? In an asychronous world where people are creating lots of different kinds of content, do I really care that a tweet about lunch came right after a bookmark of a stock report? Time doesn’t add enough context to make it meaningful, especially when you add more and more users to a stream.
In short, the problem isn’t that there’s too much data…it’s that the current design and organization of the information presented by popular aggregation services lends itself to clutter. FriendFeed in particular should take note of iGoogle’s new widgetized dashboard and show us something fresh, new and organized. Just aggregating a ton of services isn’t enough. You have to help your users orgnize and make sense of it all. Services that do that well are going to win in the long term.
