r+d

March 15, 2011

Anonymous innovation

Reading through Christopher Poole's comments at SXSW on the implications of anonymity on creativity and innovation, I was drawn to this quote. In it, I think he makes a pretty astute observation about the implications of personal reputation on desire to innovate.

"Anonymity is authenticity," said Poole. "It allows you to share in an unvarnished, unfiltered, raw and real way. We believe in content over creator." And with anonymity, users feel free to experiment without fearing reprisal, he noted. "The cost of failure is really high when you're contributing as yourself," he said. "To fail in an environment where you're contributing with your real name is costly."

It's an interesting assertion: when your name is on the line, most will tend to follow social norms and etiquette. When anonymity is honored, you may get a lot more trolls, but you also create a place where innovation and creativity can thrive.

Filed under // 4chan Anonymous Facebook

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February 21, 2011

Conan's budding empire

I don't watch a ton of late night television these days, but I love the rare occasion when I am able to catch some Conan (or Jimmy Fallon for that matter). Throughout the years, Conan has somehow managed to maintain a freshness to his show that is hard to pin down. In any case, I was intrigued by a recent Fortune article describing Conan's rise to the top of a digital empire after The Tonight Show debacle. What started out as a quest to be the host of The Tonight Show has ended in him charting a new path for the entertainment industry; one that bridges multiple media and has far-reaching implications for media distribution in a new age:

Weeks before Conan made its debut on TBS, O'Brien gave a presentation to top publicists in his new studio on the Warner Bros. lot. He and his digital staff explained that a guest's appearance on Conan was no longer just about being on air for 10 minutes; it was a connection to O'Brien's full social network of millions of fans -- a connection that could last for days or even months. "The same goes for their charities and pet projects," says Wooden. "We're ramping up our efforts to be producing digitally exclusive content with either guests on the show or people who can't appear because of scheduling conflicts."

How is he able to do this? The numbers from the Fortune infographic above tell the story: he's killing it across the board in new media. He has been since the first tweet (he set the world record for most follows in a day according to the article).

What's most interesting to me is that all of this couldn't have happened much sooner than the time it did. Had Conan assumed the reins a few years earlier and the transition from Leno had failed (as it did) he would have had little recourse. He'd have been off the air and out of a show most likely. A modern-day Arsenio Hall.

But because of all of these alternative delivery channels and media, Conan was able to linger, rally his base and re-emerge as a new type of media icon for a new age of media consumption:

Like millions of other Americans, Conan O'Brien's life has been disrupted by the digital world, and he's been forced to reinvent himself. YouTube, TiVo (TIVO), Twitter, Facebook, and other platforms have greatly diminished the cultural relevance of The Tonight Show, whose overall audience has shrunk 44%, from 5.6 million a night to 3.9 million, over the past five years, and whose key 18- to-49 demographic has shrunk from 2.4 million to 1.4 million during that time. O'Brien had worked his whole professional life with one goal in mind, to get to host The Tonight Show, and he got there, but he was born 10 years too late for it to really matter. Accidentally, however, he's learned how to innovate and make the Conan brand mean even more than The Tonight Show brand to a young, passionate, and growing audience.

Innovation in action.

Filed under // Coco Conan O'Brian Facebook I'm with Coco Twitter

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November 6, 2010

The phone book was the first Facebook

I guess it had to happen. Someone finally wrote an entire book about the phone book. Leave no stone unturned, right? Well as it turns out, there's a great lesson in the history of the phone book for innovators. When asked about innovations that changed the world, most folks conjure up thoughts of things like the light bulb, telephones, cars, etc. But how about the lowly phone book? Actually, it was pretty amazing - primarily for the cultural change it symbolized and helped usher in.

From the article at Reason:

Phone books provided a crucial element to the system: intrusiveness. While many American cities had been compiling databases of their inhabitants well before the phone was invented, listing names, occupations, and addresses, individuals remained fairly insulated from each other. Contacting someone might require a letter of introduction, a facility for charming butlers or secretaries, a long walk.

Phone books eroded these barriers. They were the first step in our long journey toward the pandemic self-surveillance of Facebook. “Hey strangers!” anyone who appeared in their pages ordained. “Here’s how to reach me whenever you feel like it, even though I have no idea who you are.”

Its immediate effect was that it facilitated commerce. For businesses, phone directory advertising would evolve into a crucial business tool. It reached the same mass audiences that newspaper and magazine advertising did, but it was cheaper, more persistent, easier to manage: Place one ad and you got a steady stream of inquiries all year long. For consumers, phone directory advertising was an even bigger boon. It gave them a comprehensive overview of the choices that were available to them for any given product or service, an efficient way to comparison shop. It made commerce more accessible and thus more competitive.

via | image

Filed under // Amazon Facebook culture phone book privacy

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October 19, 2010

Quick thoughts on Twitter's UX

I liked this passage on some of the psychological differences between the UX of Twitter and Facebook, particularly the concept of following as a subscription and the type of relationship that sets up vs. friending. Given the privacy debacle Facebook has been dealing with the past 36 hours, the note on the simplicity of the privacy is also a big plus for Twitter.

Twitter nailed a few important things in their user experience compared to alternatives like Facebook. Posts are public by default, so there aren’t debates or surprises about privacy. Streams are built out of subscriptions (“following”), not “friendship”—a word that loses meaning when your friends are 500 strangers.

via 37 Signals

Filed under // Facebook Twitter UX privacy usability user-centered design

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July 29, 2010

Lost in Val Sinestra

There are no two ways about it, being able to choose a cast of your friends and then seeing your real friends' pictures and names embedded into a created-on-the-fly movie trailer is pretty catchy. It makes you want to watch every scene of the trailer, studying the minutiae of the action.

How long will it be before we'll have a more integrated experience. Imagine technology like that used by Microsoft Photosynth, which could process hundreds of tagged Facebook pictures of you and complile a more or less 3-d version of your face. This "skin" could be digitally stitched around a real actor's face, on the fly. Imagine Xtranormal with a dash of Roger Ebert's new voice synthesizer . . . only with pictures. Voila - custom movies made with a cast of you and your friends. It's not that far off.

In the meantime, check out Lost in Val Sinestra here:

http://www2.lost-in-val-sinestra.com

Filed under // Facebook entertainment media social network

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November 24, 2009

Experiential Nits: Facebook Self-Serve Ad Charts

One of my favorite blogs is Junk Charts. The reason I like it (and Tufte's books and other chart/visual design resources) is that graphics are such a critical and often overlooked component of making a compelling argument. While complicated graphics can obfuscate meaning, a total lack of charts makes deciphering meaning from textual data significantly more difficult. Your chart should convey all the data necessary for communicating your message. No more. No less. Since message clarity and communicating meaning/importance are also fundamental to designing experiences, chart design principles also apply to aspects of experience design. As with charts, good experiences depend on message clarity.

In this department, Facebook's Self-Serve Ad graphics fall short of delivering a compelling argument. While I've snapped the images I'm referring to, you can go to Facebook Advertising and click on "Case Studies" to see them in all their glory. A couple of things here:

Average Circles (Reach Your Audience graphic)- The first graphic starts out fine. Sort of boring, but it's effective. Its basic message is that Facebook ads can improve your targeting to specific audiences. I don't necessarily need a "circles drawn to scale"-quality graphic here and while the last ring isn't labeled, I'm fine to assume it's the general FB population. So far so good.
Scale-less (Easy and Cost-Effective graphic) - Yikes, here's where we run into problems. This next graphic is missing a very important thing: scale. Unlike in the first image, in this case it's actually really important. While the chart helpfully shows "Before Facebook" and "After Facebook" it fails to specify what it's comparing. Same store sales? Conversion rate? The article mentions 50% and 10% increases in each of these respectively. But then this chart looks like neither. It looks more like 20%. Without a scale there's no way to know.
Scale-ful (Pages and Ads graphic) - Perhaps as a way to compensate for their previous scale-less chart, this one has a very prominent scale. But not really in a good way. As if inspired by This is Spinal Tap, this scale goes all the way to 100%. Only it doesn't need to. It could really be more impactful if it were tightened down a little. Make the scale max out at, say 30% or 40%. That would really illustrate the improvement and also reduce a lot of the empty chart space.

Now I'm not a professional chart designer (or graphic designer for that matter) and I'm not intentionally picking on Facebook, but it was very surprising to me to see a company like Facebook make two very noticeable graphical mistakes in the information surrounding one of their most innovative features - self-serve ads. I guess I'm just expecting more polish from a big web name like Facebook.

Then again, maybe it's not so surprising.