Transmedia Design
The Web on multiple screens: transmedia design for mobile, tablets, desktop, TV; http://eicker.at/TransmediaDesign
Updates from August, 2011 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
Gerrit Eicker
Social Networking Adoption
Pew: 65% of online adults use social networking sites – most popular with women; http://eicker.at/SocialNetworkingAdoption
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Gerrit Eicker
Pew: “Fully 65% of adult internet users now say they use a social networking site like MySpace, Facebook or LinkedIn, up from 61% one year ago. This marks the first time in Pew Internet surveys that 50% of all adults use social networking sites. … Among internet users, social networking sites are most popular with women and young adults, but most of the growth over the past year came from adults over age 30. Looking at overall usage, wired seniors grew their ranks the most over the past year; 33% of those ages 65 and older now use the sites, compared with 26% one year ago. … Looking at usage on a typical day, 43% of online adults use social networking, up from 38% a year ago. Out of all the ‘daily’ online activities that we ask about, only email (which 61% of internet users access on a typical day) and search engines (which 59% use on a typical day) are used more frequently than social networking tools.”
Pew: “The frequency of social networking site usage among young adult internet users under age 30 was stable over the last year – 61% of online Americans in that age cohort now use social networking sites on a typical day, compared with 60% one year ago. However, among the Boomer-aged segment of internet users ages 50-64, social networking site usage on a typical day grew a significant 60% (from 20% to 32%). … In a separate question, when social networking users were asked for one word to describe their experiences using social networking sites, ‘good’ was the most common response (as seen in this word cloud). Overall, positive responses far outweighed the negative and neutral words that were associated with social networking sites (more than half of the respondents used positive terms). Users repeatedly described their experiences as ‘fun,’ ‘great,’ ‘interesting’ and ‘convenient.’ Less common were superlatives such as ‘astounding,’ ‘necessity,’ and ‘empowering.’”
Gerrit Eicker
Google Plus Snippets
Google Plus One Button goes sharing: Google Plus Snippets include link, image, description; http://eicker.at/GooglePlusSnippets
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Gerrit Eicker
Google: “In June we launched the +1 button for websites, making it easier to recommend content across the web. In July, the +1 button crossed 2 billion daily views, and we also made it a lot faster. Today the +1 button appears on more than a million sites, with over 4 billion daily views, and we’re extremely excited about this momentum. … Beginning today, we’re making it easy for Google+ users to share webpages with their circles, directly from the +1 button. Just +1 a page as usual and look for the new ‘Share on Google+’ option. From there you can comment, choose a circle and share. … When you share content from the +1 button, you’ll notice that we automatically include a link, an image and a description in the sharebox. We call these ‘+snippets,’ and they’re a great way to jumpstart conversations with the people you care about. … We’re rolling out sharing and +snippets globally over the next week…”
Google: “You may already be using this markup to build rich annotations for your pages on Google Search. If not, marking up your pages is simple. Just add the correct schema.org attributes to the data already present on your pages. You’ll set a name, image, and description in your code:… For more details on alternate markup types, please see our technical documentation.”
Mashable: “In the past, clicking the +1 button only shared content to a tab on a user’s Google+ profile. This is in contrast to the Facebook Like button, which posts an article on a user’s Facebook wall. Now that Google has its own social network, the search giant can match Facebook’s button functionality.”
RWW: “Amidst all the hubbub about social media referrals this week, Google has finally made the +1 button useful. It now works the way we all thought it would, and it takes full advantage of Google Plus’s rich formatting in posts.”
TC: “This is a big, if obvious, step forward for Google’s +1 button, as it gives users a much bigger incentive to click on them.“
Gerrit Eicker
Rare
Accessibility vs. access: How the rhetoric of rare is changing in the age of information abundance; http://eicker.at/Rare
Gerrit Eicker
Lift
Obvious (the Twitter founders) goes Lift: unlocking human potential through positive reinforcement; http://eicker.at/Lift
Gerrit Eicker
Education Gamification
Donahoo: Gamification in education; http://eicker.at/2l vs. Bogost: Gamification is bullshit; http://eicker.at/2m
Gerrit Eicker
Don’t be Evil
Swartz: What does Google mean by “evil“? http://eicker.at/Evil – And a mentionable reply by Cutts: http://eicker.at/NoOne
Gerrit Eicker
Facebook Places: Where We Go
Facebook adds time to location sharing: Where we are, where we go, and where we’ve been; http://eicker.at/WhereWeGo
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Gerrit Eicker
Facebook: “Add where you are to anything you share – In the past, you needed a smart phone to easily share your location. Now you can share your location from your computer, too, and say: Where you’ve been. Remember where you were in your favourite photos. Where you are now. If friends are nearby, they might just meet you there. Where you’re going. Friends who have been there can give you tips or even join in the plan.”
TC: “It was almost exactly one year ago that Facebook launched Places, their location-based offering. … Fast forward to today: Foursquare recently raised a large round of funding valuing them at $600 million. And Facebook is killing off Places. – To be clear, Facebook is not ducking out of the location game itself. In fact, you could say that they’re doubling-down on it. But they are moving away from the game that the ‘check-in’ services have been playing. And a result of that is Places being killed off and being replaced by new ‘Nearby’ area… This is smart, as it’s something none of the other location services have really nailed yet. And now that location is being emphasized on every Facebook action (though it can easily be turned off) – and not just on mobile…”
IF: “Facebook will remove the Places check-in feed from its mobile apps and interface, a company spokesperson confirms with us. Rather than check-in, users will be able to add their city-level location or tag a specific Place in any post. … When users post content from the web, mobile site, or smartphone apps, they’ll have the option to tag a Place, whether they’re there currently or just want to mention it. As TechCrunch illustrates, Facebook’s foot-traffic incentivizing Check-in Deals will still be available, with users seeing the option to redeem them appended to the news feed story of their mention of a location.”
Gerrit Eicker
Facebook: Sharing Privacy
Facebook follows Diaspora, Google Plus: Making it easier to share with who you want; http://eicker.at/FacebookSharingPrivacy
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Gerrit Eicker
Facebook: “Today we’re announcing a bunch of improvements that make it easier to share posts, photos, tags and other content with exactly the people you want. You have told us that ‘who can see this?’ could be clearer across Facebook, so we have made changes to make this more visual and straightforward. The main change is moving most of your controls from a settings page to being inline, right next to the posts, photos and tags they affect. Plus there are several other updates here that will make it easier to understand who can see your stuff (or your friends’) in any context. Here’s what’s coming up, organized around two areas: what shows up on your profile, and what happens when you share something new. … These changes will start to roll out in the coming days. When they reach you, you’ll see a prompt for a tour that walks you through these new features from your homepage. In the meantime, you can read more about the upcoming changes from the links throughout this post. We’ll look forward to your feedback on all of this. – Taken together, we hope these new tools make it easier to share with exactly who you want, and that the resulting experience is a lot clearer and a lot more fun.”
WSJ/ATD: “Facebook Makes Sharing More Granular (Hmm … Where Have We Heard That Pitch Before?) – Facebook isn’t borrowing the greater Google+ anatomy, like ‘Circles’ of friends and a mix of asymmetrical and mutual relationships. – Instead, Facebook is making a huge number of tweaks to its profile design, many of them aimed at addressing common user complaints. – This launch seems likely to ruffle Facebook users’ notoriously sensitive feathers given its little tweaks affect so many parts of the Facebook experience. But at least based on the press briefing, it’s not obvious that any one change will be controversial or dramatic.”
NYT: “No doubt the company also wants to diminish the possibility of legislation, investigation or litigation stemming from complicated or confusing privacy settings. And with mounting competition from other social networking sites, namely Google+, which emphasizes more compartmentalized communications to different sets of friends and acquaintances, Facebook is also keen to keep its customers’ trust. … Whether users will find the changes more inviting or simpler remains to be seen – as does whether they will opt to be more or less private. Facebook declined to share statistics on its users’ current privacy settings.”
TC: “So what changed? The obvious answer is Google+. Facebook’s response to my assertion was that Facebook wished it could have built these features in the time since Google+ launched, but that work on these changes actually began around six months ago. Which is probably half true. Facebook knew Google was going to be launching a social network that would try to underscore all of its flaws — note how many of these features are already live on Google+ — so it preemptively started working to fix the things that annoy people about Facebook. – Whatever the case, these are all good changes, and they make Facebook better.”
VB: “The features sound a lot like the features that appear in Google’s latest social network Google+. Rather than sequester the privacy settings on a separate settings page away from the actual action on the site, Facebook is moving its privacy and sharing features straight to the main page. It removes a lot of the hassle of having to jump to different pages to tweak privacy controls.”
GigaOM: “And although Facebook executives have dismissed Google+ as a non-threat, Facebook has certainly showed a renewed zest in shipping new products and features in the weeks since Google’s social network launched. As my colleague Mathew Ingram wrote recently, ‘It seems clear that the competition is keeping Facebook awake at night — which may be a good thing.‘ As Facebook and Google duke it out for consumer loyalty, they’re both bringing their best efforts to the table as quickly as possible — and the real winners will be the millions of social media users across both platforms.”
IF: “The changes may reduce the volume of content that is unwittingly overshared, and help users protect themselves from being associated with objectionable content against their will. The end result could be an increase in confidence in Facebook privacy that leads users to be comfortable sharing more, which could in turn increase engagement with the site. … Privacy has been Facebook’s biggest problem to date. A lack of confidence in the site’s privacy settings has scared away new users, frustrated existing users, and kept people from sharing more sensitive content. If Facebook can combine technological and design solutions with reassurance that users are in control of their online presence, it could leave its troubles behind and move towards making users happy rather than preventing them from getting angry.”
Gerrit Eicker
MagAppZine
Digital publishing with MagAppZine: Give us 15 minutes [and a PDF]. We’ll give you an [iPad] app; http://eicker.at/MagAppZine
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Gerrit Eicker
MagAppZine: “…is a New York, NY based company founded in 2010 by former Apple employees who teamed up with an Adobe engineer to create the ultimate digital publishing tool. – MagAppZine allows publishers to create branded apps for their publications and distribute them to the world via mobile devices like the iPad, opening up their business to a whole new audience while maintaining a lower overhead. – The company’s slogan, Publishing Gone Digital, reflects MagAppZine’s mission: to give all publications the opportunity to distribute their content in the most modern way without spending an exorbitant amount of time and money.”
MagAppZine: “The creation of your branded MagApp and deployment onto the Apple App Store [starts at $2,994].”
O’Reilly: “Is the platform targeted toward a specific kind of publisher? Paul Canetti [founder]: ‘Clearly the name brings in magazines first and foremost, but the tool itself is really applicable to all sorts of publications. Anything that can be a PDF is fair game. I have a lot of conversations with small book publishers looking to create a bookstore app on a particular topic or as a branding tool for the publisher or a specific author. It is my philosophy that you should be everywhere your readers potentially are, so when someone searches for you on the App Store, it’s you that they find.’ – How can book publishers use the platform? Canetti: ‘The bookstore app is really cool, and chunking up books into collections fits nicely under the umbrella of the app. I’m also excited to start seeing sub-divisions of books – selling chapter by chapter – or using the subscription functionality to have a sort of book club app or a series where new content is being released regularly. … We’re also rolling out a new tiered monthly pricing structure that has plans starting at $99 a month.‘”
RWW: “It’s a white label, DIY app-publishing platform that is limited to PDF uploads, website viewing in an in-app browser and in-app sales of multiple issues of any publication. It looks really well thought out, simple and accessible. The price is about to drop substantially, too with the Fall release of the 2.0 version of the service. … Can PDF-type content do well in an app store context? I’m not sure, but if I had print-style content to distribute I think I would give this service a shot. It looks much nicer, frankly, than magazine reading app platforms like Zinio or HP’s Magcloud (which I love in theory but never use in practice). I want to go directly to the magazines I want to read, not wander around some app store from the app store that’s 75% filled with magazines of questionable quality.”
Gerrit Eicker 08:05 on 31. August 2011 Permalink |
JN: “Mobile use will rise, but desktop computers will remain important, forcing companies to design for multiple platforms, requiring continuity in visual design, features, user data, and tone of voice. … [T]he best computer is the one you have with you when you want something done. This will often be your phone or tablet. … After mobile devices and desktop PCs, the 3rd main category of screen-based user experience is television. … At that point, one thing is certain: TV will need a 3rd UI that’s distinct from both your mobile and desktop designs. … As if it weren’t enough to design 2 or 3 different UIs for mobile, desktop, and possibly TV, there are 2 even more extreme screen sizes to consider: really, really small and really, really large. Again, each will need its own UI. … Most companies will probably deploy only 2 UI designs: mobile and desktop. Others might need 3, 4, or even all 5, depending on their industry. … Obviously, UIs will look different on different screen sizes but they should look similar enough to feel like two sides of the same coin. … The smaller the device, the smaller the feature set you can comfortably provide. … The user’s data should be the same in all locations. … [U]se a similar tone of voice for all platforms…”
RWW: “Regardless of how much value people derive from PCs compared to mobile, the reality is that most companies these days require both a website for PC viewing and one for mobile viewing. Nielsen sensibly advocates a different design for PC and mobile devices. … By mobile, he means both smartphones and tablets. Many companies may want a separate design for each, although that isn’t a focus of this particular report. … Most companies won’t need to focus on designing for the 3 emerging screen types. Television is the one most likely to need attention in the near future.”