UX meets Blog consumption

When it comes extracting information from consulting-type blog posts, I follow the same theory as Steve Krug when trying to find usability problems on websites. This is a bit of stretch but it makes sense to me (surprise!). For example, say we are trying to figure out how to fix a toilet and Bob Vila has a blog on fixing toilets but to read it will have to shell out a dollar. Do I feel that this information is worth a dollar? Sure, but is it worth me taking out my wallet, entering my information, authorizing the payment and burn a few minutes of my life? Um, no. What I’ll do, is do a Google search for fixing toilets, read three or four of the free articles and extract the major points from all of them. The idea is that while one blog may miss a point, if the point is important enough or significant enough, another blog will bring it up. Reading other points of view on the same subject doesn’t hurt either.

Laziness and Anti-Social Media

So off the toilet, and back to my point. Recently, a very well known and respected blogger, Dennis Howlett (you can follow him on Twitter: @dahowlett) started providing some premium content for a small fee. His explanation for doing so can be found here. While I respect his work, I simply cannot be bothered to pay to read his insights for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, I’m lazy. (OK, I’m not lazy in general, but my wallet is pretty far from my desk). Secondly, and more importantly in my eyes, is that it’s a blog. As a blog, it is part of the social media eco-system. You can create discussions with blogs and interact with readers with a click of a publish-button. Making people pay to engage with you seems pretty darn anti-social if you ask me – especially for a blog, which really, is often just a vehicle to boost one’s reputation in an industry (*cough*). Simply put, I feel that if someone decides to post actionable advice on his own blog, he has opted to work for free.

So while I wish Mr. Howlett all the luck in the world, unfortunately, the next time I run into a prompt telling me I need to pay to view some content – you can be sure that I’ll be Google-ing shortly afterwards and reading another three brilliant posts written by similarly qualified writers – for free.

P.S. Bob Vila does have an article about fixing toilets. Pssst, and it’s for free.

We liked them before they sold-old you poser.

As immature as doing this was, I guess it was our way to express how we felt, how we lost a bit of our coolness, and we resented it. Well, I’m sorry to say, this high school pettiness is happening all over again. But this time, we’re not talking about R.E.M. or NIN, we’re talking about Twitter, you poser.

Sorry Oprah and Ashton, you don’t get it

Recently, I discovered a site called Here Before Oprah. Essentially, it’s a way to prove that you were old-school and a fan of Twitter before Oprah discovered it and brought her legions of fans onto along (enter the fail whale, stage left). But, weren’t we the ones praising Twitter just yesterday? Weren’t we the ones pushing for more people to get on it? Was I the only one that got tingles when newspaper writers started asking Twitterati for their opinions on articles? So why the about face? Instead of embracing Oprah, why make the point that we were on it before her? To keep cool, I guess.

Add to this, recent posts saying that celebrities only see Twitter as a broadcast channel, that they only talk amongst themselves, and that they don’t see it for it “truly is”. Truly is. What a crock. Yeah, because we all “got” Twitter when it first came out. Uh huh, sure. Y’know, I don’t recall Twitter originally being designed for retweeting (RT for those of you who don’t “get it”), but all Tweeters do it these days. Like so much in this world, many things grew and evolved into something greater than they were originally designed for, or were truly meant for.

Dinner knives make great screwdrivers

How many of you have cell phones, but primarily use it for texting? How many of you own TVs and use them to babysit your kids? How many of you have used a dinner knife as a screwdriver? In the end, it doesn’t matter what a tool was originally designed for, each person will use a tool as they see fit. If they derive some value that’s important to them, then great! If not, who are we to jump down their throats and act elitist?

If we stuck to using things for what they truly were designed for, we wouldn’t have Krazy Glue, Post-it notes, pace-makers, nor Twitter itself (I do recall that the internet was originally designed for the military – what’s your name soldier?).

Twitterati, Schmitterati

Looking down at Oprah’s plunge into Twitter is shameful, and seeing her presence on Twitter as the end of it is ludicrous. The web is undergoing an age of engagement and collaboration, i.e., the ultimate in marketing. The web is engaging, accountable, and collaborative. All this elitist behaviour is counter to the evolution.

So for those of you who see celebreties on Twitter as a negative thing, grow up, and embrace their curiosity. Welcome them and be friendly… you web 2.0/social media “expert” posers.

Twitter is a great source of information, but who can keep up?

Twitter is a time-suck.

I’m not sure what the magic number of  people to follow is at which it becomes unmanageable to keep track, but personally, I think that number is around the 200-mark or so. By following so many people at once, there is so much noise and distraction – it is hard to concentrate on any one thing or any one person. As my friend and co-worker, Kirsten, puts it, Twitter is often like an echo chamber. So much content is re-tweeted, and so many conversations are going one at once that  it’s hard to pick out the new and meaningful content. Twitter can be completely draining – and that’s just wrong. Social media should be engaging and invigorating, not tiring and exhausting.

Get organized.

A screen shot of TweetDeck.

Following less people.

One option I considered, was to simply follow less people. I began trying to un-follow people that I either didn’t engage with, or stopped reading – but that proved to be a difficult task as well. Many of the Tweeters I follow tweet about all the mundane minutea of their lives:   like what time they woke up, or how hot their coffee is. So I thought, “Well, perhaps I can cut some of the noise by un-following these Tweeters!”. Then, just as I’m about to drop them, they tweet brilliance – insight that resonates with me so much that I must convince myself that having to read their silly posts is just the price of admission to be part of the thought-party. There went that idea, right out the window.

Taking a break.

Probably the easiest thing to do to avoid Twitter burn-out, unless it’s your job to be on Twitter all day, is to take a break. Accept that it’s OK not to be up-to-date with every single development. It’s OK not to constantly engage in conversation. Twitter will be there when you come back. Promise. The world won’t end, and you’ll feel great – trust me. Treat Twitter like chatting in a cafe. You wouldn’t sit in a Starbucks all day and night would you? (Gosh I hope not at least.) So why blow an entire day on Twitter?

Twitter is like a river. As much as it can quench your thirst for news and conversation – it’s humanly impossible to drink all that Twitter has to offer. It’s OK to take sips – and breaks. So how about it? Close the window. Disconnect for a while. Get out and get some fresh air and feel free to retweet me when you get back to Twitter in a day or so. Twitter can wait. Honest.

How about you? Have you ever experienced social media burn-out or other similar techno-stresses? How do you cope?

Sure they taste good, but are they good for you?

Is the use of cookies to track online behaviour an invasion of privacy?

If you were watching the news lately, you’d think they probably were. Last week, the White House caught quite a bit of flack about using web beacons (a.k.a., web bugs) and persistent cookies on their website, http://www.whiteHouse.gov. Interestingly enough, the use of web beacons (in a nut shell, JavaScript that calls a tiny image while transmitting some data about a web site’s visitors) was not the problem. The problem was the existence of persistent cookies. I won’t go into detail about how the cookies got there, or if they were actually set by the White House website, but basically these little text files that are stored on your computer are quite controversial to some. I’ll just offer this:

Relax. What’s the big deal?

I feel there is this strange perception of what is private and what is not with respect to different mediums. Consider this: whenever you use your credit card, you are tracked by the store, and the credit card company. Banks especially, know if your credit card usage is out of your “norm” and will contact you. Yet, no one complains about that. Similarly, cell phones today have GPS functionality. Yet no one seems to raise a fuss about being located by the phone company. And those close circuit cameras around your offices? No worries. But when it comes to web surfing, it’s a whole different ball of wax.

For some, web usage must remain secret, and completely private. You’d think they were spies, deleting their caches and flushing their cookies after every surf-session. I think the public has to accept that anytime technology is in between you and the person you are trying to communicate with, there is a risk of information theft. Have you secured your WiFi connection? Chew on that for a bit.

Blocking cookies? Pointless.

There is a misconception that deleting or blocking cookies will make you disappear from web analysts’ and Big Brother’s radars. News Flash: You’re just fudging up the numbers. Outside of using public computers, where I totally condone deleting cookies since people might login as you if you’re not careful, I don’t see the point. With respect to Google Analytics (GA) alone, even if you were to block cookies, web analysts still have your IP, screen resolution, browser make, and a myriad of other stats. The cookie is just a small part of the equation.

The anatomy of the Google Analytics cookie system

Upon closer inspection of the GA cookies you’ll notice that the GA cookies actually don’t contain a great deal of information about you. Basically, they only contain:

• A unique number identifying your session
• A Google Analytics account number that identifies the web bug account
• A cookie that refreshes every 30 minutes with no real information in it
• One persistant cookie with no real information in it

By blocking these cookies, you successfully do the following:

• Increase the number of “Unique Visitors” reported
• Reduce the number of return visitors reported

That’s pretty much it really. (See for yourself with Stéphane Hamel‘s WASP application.)

NOTE. Yes, I know 3rd-party cookies are still borderline in terms of privacy. I’m talking about 1st-party cookies here. But thanks.

Most cookie usage is not evil

Another argument I hear is that some users don’t want customized content, or they don’t want to let marketers into their heads because they find marketers “evil”. Contrary to popular believe, marketing isn’t evil. At the heart of marketing (and most web analytics) is the attempt to discover a need or want within a market segment (or to find a new market segment completely) and satisfy them. That’s it. Marketers simply want to figure out what you want and give it to you (I know, crazy concept). If you don’t like what they’re offering, ignore them (which many of us already do), and market forces will do away with them eventually.

Other methods to maintain your privacy

So, deleting/rejecting cookies isn’t the holy grail of privacy. What is a privacy-nut to do then? Here are my tips for those who wish to drop off the map:

• Delete your: Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and Twitter accounts as well as your blogs and personal websites. Get your personal information off of there – those are prime targets for identity theft, which is much more serious than your surfing history. Try doing a serach on Piple to see what I mean.
• Always use a web proxy you created to hide your IP. Don’t trust anyone else’s proxy but your own.
• Never use WiFi, especially don’t do online banking via wireless.
• Never use, Hotmail, or Gmail. In fact, don’t use mail at all.
• Don’t use a cell phone (iPhones included, dear lord, especially not iPhones)
• Don’t use satellite TV.
• Burn your garbage. Why hack cookies when I can simply pick out your bank statements from the trash?

Essentially, disconnect from the wired world altogether. Or…. accept the reality of the web, that ANY information you put into it is somewhat vulnerable (so be careful about what you publish) and know that cookies aren’t that big a threat, and are definitely the least of your worries.

What are your thoughts about cookies and privacy?

(Thanks to Jacqueline Ng, Stéphane Hamel, Adrian Liem and my classmates at UBC for the great conversation and feedback.)

Not all "Twitistics" are meainingful, most are are simply "mind-candy"

Over the last few weeks, I’ve read tweets from various tweeters proclaiming the size of their follower list, the number of direct messages they have, and percentages of this and that. I’d be lying if I didn’t say that, from time to time, I felt a bit of follower envy, however, after some thought and discussion with Jacqueline Ng,  I wondered what the big deal was. Do these stats really mean anything?

Like most statistics (though in this case, we’re dealing with population parameters), Twitter statistics (or “Twitistics” as I like to term them),  lack a point of reference for me. For instance, what does “65% @replies” actually mean? Is it someone engaging with many members of their community or is it a few lengthy back-and-forths with old school friends? And what does “engaging” actually mean to different tweeters? What was the original purpose of a user’s Twitter feed in the first place? Does the Twitter feed belong to a corporate brand, or a mother at home? What’s needed here is a point-of-reference, otherwise, why should we care?

Though I know first hand about the thrill of seeing my follower figure pass certain milestones,  all that is artificial. I know that the number of followers I have is meaningless just like the number of “hits” my website gets. What’s important here are the metrics that I value, as opposed to generic meaningless ones.

For instance, my personal goals on Twitter are to exchange ideas with others in the fields of web design/development, marketing, business and higher education, and to market my skills to potential employers (talk about transparency). Thus the metrics I value are:

• the number of followers I actually have interesting conversations with and
• the number of followers I have that hold positions of influence at companies I’d like to work for.

And metrics I don’t pay too much attention to are:

• Number of DMs
• Number of followers, etc

Furthermore, since these are my personal goals, I don’t feel the need to advertise them because these numbers have meaning only to me, while all the other numbers don’t and are just mind-candy.

So the next time you think about tweeting something like “I need only 1 more follower to crack 2000″, think about:

1. Does this 1 more follower actually mean anything to you?
2. How tweeting something like that reflects on you, i.e., will you come across as someone who values a followers opinion? or will you come across as a shallow person trying to simply build their follower list?

For those not keeping score, social media guru Chris Brogan, posted a sponsored post for Kmart on Dad-o-matic. Long story short: they gave him some cash to shop, and he blogged about the experience. Longer story shorter, some people, namely some on Twitter, thought it was… a bad idea, and it hurt his credibility. Chris explained his rationale not too long after. I’ll have to admit – I did not finish reading it – it was quite long and I wanted to get some snowboarding in (sorry Chris!).

While I was enjoying my first run of the season at Mont Bromont,which is running a wonderful special on passes right now, I had some time to think (in between the moments when I realized that the edges of my Tech-Nine were dull and when I wiped out) about “the situation”. Did Chris betray the trust of his audience? Or was he perfectly in the right to do what he did, the way he did it? My final decision: “Doesn’t matter”.

We could debate this until we were blue in the face, but it won’t settle anything. The fact of the matter is that, for some, Chris has less credibility that he used to have, and for others, what he did was just fine. There is no right, there is no wrong. It’s kind of like arguing what is the best color of Crayola Markers (read Croyola’s tips for stain removal here).

For some, trust is based on whether they feel someone is transparent, while for others, whether they are transparent and in line with their moral system. Is either side right? No, at least not in my books. So if you lost trust in Chris, that’s totally your call. If you still think he’s a straight-shooter – by all means, go ahead. Vent or praise, do as you wish.

But regardless of what you think – know this: how you express yourself on the web is being watched and archived (as mentioned by Mitch Joel of Twist Image fame). How you praise or demean Chris is being watched and read – the web is very no-take-backsies these days, and people are making judgements on your character as well, and whether they should trust you.

With that said, I don’t have any gift certificates to give away, I have no agreements with any ski hills or marker manufacturers – I just like to share things I approve of, give my opinion, and make fun of situations that are really kind of silly in “trying economic times” like these, especially around the holidays.

By the way, WordPress 2.7 works like a dream. Like seriously. Wow.

Happy holidays. Play nice. Be safe.

Recently Gmail has been acting, let’s say, “buggy”, to be kind, around the same time it launched it’s task manager service. Meanwhile Yahoo has been having a few financial hiccups of its own. And these are the big boys. Twitter has been up longer than usual, but you just know we’ll see the whale again. I recently tinkered with BOSS with another service’s API. All was good until the service went down for a bit. The first thing I could think of was, “Thank goodness I’m not charging for this”. Right now, when Google hiccups, my sites slow down, searches don’t work and there’s nothing I can do. Mind you, I’m only taking into account reliability issues, but what if the cloud’s pillars… shift?

I won’t get into the countless Terms of Agreements I’ve never fully read (though I still checked off the boxes indicating that I did), but I’m sure many of them hint at injecting ads and the like eventually. There’s nothing like finding out one day your application is behaving differently.

With all this said, I truly admire all the brave startups willing to build on top of this less than stable foundation, and having the brains and the wit to foresee all these problems and plan ahead.

As we’ve seen the internet born from a need to make a more robust and survivable network, perhaps the cloud is the beginning of a similar phenomenon? Could we see cloud services duplicated, networked and shared in a way that if Google goes down, we can still check our Gmail (and heaven forbid, plan our tasks)? I like to think so.

Until then, I’ll just have multiple e-mail accounts.