I Need “tweedback” for http://twitter.com/PaulDJohnston

I’ve been wondering lately how my twitter stream is perceived and whether or not it is enjoyed by all and sundry who have the joy of reading it.

Twitter is where I do most of my social media interaction and as such, I’d love some feedback or “tweedback”. There isn’t a simple feedback mechanism (apart from “follow” and “unfollow”) that can easily be added into twitter and I’d like more than 140 characters of response (if the person so wishes).

So this is my tweedback blog. Any tweedback on my twitter stream, please post a comment here and I’ll get it!

5 Star Ratings Are Worthless

I’ve been looking up on Amazon and other shopping sites and aggregators for various products over the last few weeks, and have found something very interesting in my behaviour.

I don’t really read the 5 Star reviews

Why not? Because my behaviour points to a different way of approaching reviews. When I find a product online, I am very unlikely to purchase it without a clear and compelling reason. One of the best reasons is if one of my trusted friends tells me to.  All well and good at this point.

If there are no trusted friends to check out, then I will go to my next best source of information, and that is a highly trusted reviewer. Think of a magazine/blog that you like and enjoy reading and if that person recommends something, it is likely you will look into it.

However, in the absence of a trusted review from a friend or a trusted reviewer, what I look for is the minority public opinion.

Why the “Minority Opinion” counts

First off, there has to be some opinion to see.  If there are no user reviews of a product then how am I going to know? The marketing gumph is set out to make you want to purchase it, and often you won’t be looking unless it has the features you want e.g. “I need a phone” means you’re not going to be looking at washing machines.

When there are reviews, then they will often fall into one of a few camps:

• sycophant – “I love this product” with a 5-star rating
• never satisfied – “This product is rubbish” with a 0-star rating
• partially considered – either one of the above 2, but with a 0.5-star or 4.5-star rating
• considered opinion – “This is what I think” – between 1 and 4 stars

What I tend to take notice of first is the overall number and trend of the ratings. This will give me a clue as to whether the product is good or bad.  If lots of people have reviewed it, then if it is positive or negative, it gives gives you a good idea of how a user has used it.

The next thing I will do is look at the opposite reviews to the trend. I will ignore both the sycophant and the never satisfied (that’s the 0 star and 5 star ratings), and then, if the trend is positive, I will read the considered but negative views, and if the trend is negative, then I will read the considered and positive views.

This gives me a quick overview of either what is good about a product I might not want, or what is bad about a product that I might want.

Minority Opinion informs quickly

I still don’t own an iPhone (or an iPod Touch). When chatting with people about what phone I should get next, I often get told about the iPhone (and then handed one to play with).  The most important thing that they then say is something like:

• it’s a great device, but the phone’s not very good
• I love the apps and the free data, but wish that I could get it on a different provider

These reviews are positive, but considered. This is much more useful to me than either a sycophantic yes or a never satisfied no.

Are 5 Star Ratings Worthless?

No, not completely. But the way that I read information online and the speed with which I have to do it means that I will take less notice of it than a 3 or 4 star considered opinion.

Just getting positive reviews doesn’t help me one bit.

The Perfect Microsite… is now Social

I was reading this post:

http://wearesocial.net/blog/2009/04/death-microsite-act-4/

and was wondering why anyone thinks that Microsites are anything useful anyway. Most microsites exist to support a campaign and are temporary anyway.  The fact is that I don’t like them because they generally support an expensive marketing campaign and are essentially identikit anyway.  They’ll have some cool content, they’ll “hero” a brand and then there’ll be a “register” and a “send to a friend” type of thing.

Microsites have been dead a long time – Agencies just don’t know it

The thing that always amused me about microsites was how they generated traffic from all the wrong people. A large proportion of the traffic was from workers/friends at other agencies wondering what the agency that built it had just done. A large other part of the traffic was from those who received the campaign anyway, and so weren’t new customers.

Microsites start in the wrong place

Basically, social networks make the rules change so significantly, that Microsites become much less important (unless you are still working to the same metrics as 10 years ago – Hint: they’ve changed!).  It’s far more about who the audience is than what you are trying to promote.

Microsites (or their replacement) must now be social.What that means is yet to be understood as nobody has yet done a highly successful social campaign yet.  When it does, all I hope is that agencies don’t just do their usual “copy and screw it up” routine.

Marketing costs will reduce, Community Consulting will Increase

This is the key. The world will change to be much more about who your community is and where they talk, rather than trying to setup “microsites” which are at best temporary and at worst a celebration of how much money an agency can make out of a stupid company just for some old style print design on the web.

Community is now so important that it cannot be ignored. Most of the major companies are aware of this, but it changes marketing into a much more conversational activity. It’s not even about permission to talk to me, as I now have an expectation of a conversation with any brands.

How do you manage community?

Psychology and Sociology are far more important in marketing now than they ever were. Maybe the key people are not techies or designers any more, but those that are able to understand people and the business models of a client. It’s a very different world.

twhirl vs. tweetdeck (March 2009)

I love twitter (here’s my profile: @PaulDJohnston). It’s my favourite social network, mainly because it’s so simple, quick and social. The best way to use twitter that I’ve found is via a client on your desktop, as the web interface, while useful, doesn’t give you all the info you need at a glance.

Full disclosure: I’ve been using Twhirl for most of the time I’ve been on Twitter (that’s about… 2 and a half years). Twhirl and Tweedeck are clients written in Adobe Air (which is basically Flash on your desktop). Having used Twhirl for so long, I’m quite used to how it does things, but I’ve been increasingly noticing my friends on twitter transferring to using Tweetdeck and I wondered why.

So, here’s a bit of a review of Tweetdeck vs Twhirl.

Twhirl – http://www.twhirl.org/

Twhirl Client

Overview

Nice simple client with an intuitive interface. You see your tweets come in, and you can easily just type your tweets and get out there. Very simple to understand, and when I’ve introduced users to twitter for the first time, it’s usually through Twhirl. Has the ability to add not just twitter accounts, but also seesmic, friendfeed and others.  Very useful, although with multiple accounts, come multiple windows, which can quickly become a little unmanageable.

It’s simple to use for a single account, and if all you are after is a constant stream of updates from who you follow on twitter, then it’s very simple and clean. It doesn’t easily lend itself to more complex use of the social space, such as twitter search (even though the functionality is there).

The clarity of the interface is my favourite part of Twhirl. Simply being able to see at a glance who is tweeting and whether it’s a reply or direct message is very important to me. It means I can see at a glance if I want to read a tweet or not.  Let’s face it, I don’t want to be taking all my time up, but a quick glance can sometimes be all I have time for.

I would give Twhirl 8/10 for being a solid and simple twitter client. It provides a clean, clear interface for novice/beginner twitter usage, and as such is the perfect client to start off with.  It is let down by not providing filtering of a stream, and not providing a simple way of viewing real-time search results and grouping of users.

Pros

• Simple one column interface
• Different colours for @Replies, and Direct Messages within the stream allows for quick glance checking of my stream
• Can easily have multiple accounts displayed at the same time
• Only a few buttons, and small functionality subset
• Easy @Reply, ReTweet and Direct Message mechanism
• I like the colours – personal preference I know, but the defaults are easy on the eye to me, and I know that if I see the “twhirl green” on the screen, then twhirl is trying to get my attention

Cons

• No filtering on a stream of tweets
• Can’t display @replies and Direct Messages at the same time as the timeline
• Account management and creation is a little “clunky” and not intuitive – this is minor as once setup, you really shouldn’t need to worry about it
• No “grouping” of users, to display only tweets from specific people

TweetDeck – http://www.tweetdeck.com/

Tweetdeck Client

I like Tweetdeck and it’s definitely trying to do more than twhirl.  It’s a pure twitter client, and has the added advantage of a multi-column interface. It starts with just “All Friends”, “Replies” and “Direct Messages”. You can easily add multiple columns with groups of your friends in it (you set who is in the groups). This is useful when you just want to find out about a subset of who you follow. You can also set a column for a search on twitter. So if you are interested in a specific hashtag, for example, you can see all public tweets related to that hashtag.

There is lots of information and sometimes it gets a little overwhelming. The most useful buttons I’ve found for each column are the “Mark all as seen” and the “Clear seen tweets” buttons. These allow you to remove from the interface things that are “past”.

The font size is a little bigger than twhirl and as such, you can fit less tweets onto the screen. This is frustrating as I find I do a lot of scrolling. The column width appears to be fixed also (or is difficult to change), and so the interface basically has to take over a maximised space on the desktop, which is not hugely helpful.

There are also other functions, such as adding in 12seconds, Twitscoop and Stocktwits to the interface, but I haven’t used these.

However with the search columns, the grouping and the multiple columns, Tweetdeck can be very powerful in giving information very quickly on a specific subject.

I would give Tweetdeck 7.5/10 for being a good twitter client. It is in my opinion, the best choice for the twitter power user. It has good grouping of users and provides simple filtering of information. Tweetdeck is let down by the interface being not quite intuitive enough and providing too much information within a non-customisable and cluttered workspace.

Pros

• Lots of information available
• Grouping of users is vital
• Search available in the same interface
• Simple Filtering of streams

Cons

• Single twitter account only
• Cannot find a user’s profile without their image being available
• Sometimes too much information
• Easily cluttered
• Lots of features I just won’t use
• Font size and column widths aren’t customisable

Twitter Applications, Persistence and Twimages

I love twitter – mostly because I can interact with a large number of people at the same time, very easily. However, you only ever get “now” on twitter. I very very rarely ever look back of tweets of either myself or others. If I do, it’s never more than the last 10 or so.

Twitter Applications

There are lots of cool apps, such as twitpic and clients such as twhirl and tweetdeck that really add some value to twitter. The interface and the interaction they generate makes a lot of difference to the overall twitter experience. If there was someway of walking a user through these (no there’s an idea) then you could get more people enthused about twitter.

Persistence

But the best twitter apps are those that persist data from twitter. Most tweets just get “lost” in the ether, and very few people will read them. One study showed that a link in a tweet lasts just 5 minutes! So when building applications, you have to think about how twitter is used and how to persist information for a tweet (like twitpic) or that can utilise tweeting (such as tipjoy).

Twimages – http://twimages.org

I created twimages.org after a conversation with @Hamlesh and it has produced some very interesting results. All of a sudden a user’s avatar/profile image becomes much more revealing! Because you can get hold of the profile image, you can generate a map of images of twitter user’s for a specific user.

You can see who you have conversations with.  It changes over time, and as such, can show a change in who you have conversations with.

Check it out. My twimage is: http://twimages.org/PaulDJohnston

Would love your thoughts on it too.

What do you think?

Usability and Social Applications

I’ve been thinking a lot about social networking and it’s application in the real world. Social Networks (of the internet kind) are here to stay, and everyone is now trying to “socialise” their websites and online interaction by adding commenting or by blogging or something similar.  You can even go on Facebook and Throw Sheep and other items (which I personally think is pointless).

Social networks are (and are increasingly going to) change the world we live in. The New Scientist article on Innovation: How Social Networking Might Change the World is an interesting starting point for the conversation.

Usability

I’ve been thinking about the applications that I use on these social networks and why.  To be honest, the socialisation of the web is due to one factor and that is usabliity.

Most people when talking about usability focus on visual design, or if you’re very lucky, on how a user travels through a web experience. The functional design is sometimes discussed as well, and these kinds of applications often are better than most, but there is a more important factor

Simplicity and Speed of Interaction

The applications and social networks I use the most are Twitter, Email (yes it is a social network), commenting on Blogs and then Facebook. I am using Facebook and Email less and less, and here’s why:

It takes very little time to tweet and comment

In my busy day (and social networks makes life more busy, not less) I don’t want to have to write a full email, or even a blog post to get most of my points across.  I want to be able to make my point, see the reaction and have a conversation.

My favourite apps that I use regularly:

• Twitter – simple way of just saying what you’re doing right now, and having a conversation with your friends
• SuperBadger (Facebook App) – change the world with a few simple clicks – and it really is changing the world!

People are now getting used to real time interactions, and there is beginning to be real time search too. http://search.twitter.com can now be incorporated into google using a Greasemonkey script: Greasemonkey Twitter Script.  The speed with which we expect to interact is changing.

Building Social Applications

The issue with applications is now simplicity and speed. Barack Obama realised this with his twitter stream and iPhone app for the 08 Election in the US. Quick information, simple interaction and you can get it now.  It was always about getting noticed, and the world is becoming more simple, not more complicated.

The applications that will win, are those that provide the user with the most power, whilst asking as little as possible in terms of time and thought.  Twitter wins and so does SuperBadger for me.

Why I dislike Auto-Follow on Twitter

There are many websites that allow you to auto-follow people on Twitter.  Twitter essentially allows you to follow anybody who is using the service for free and without asking their permission.  The thing is, why should someone follow someone else?

Why Follow?

Well, for me (and this is my personal opinion) I want to know what’s going on with:

• my friends
• my colleagues/work contacts
• my industry
• my hobbies

So I will follow people who are interesting and tweet interesting things about those topics.  I will also follow people on recommendation of other people on twitter, hence why ReTweeting is a good thing and not a bad thing.

Auto-Follow systems

There are a number of websites out there that allow you to set up an automatic follow for anybody that follows you. This is fine, but my opinion of this is clear:

being followed by someone is *not* enough of an incentive to follow them back – http://twitter.com/PaulDJohnston/statuses/1240622560

Why should I follow someone, when I know the simplicity of how easy it is to follow them? It’s not a numbers game, and there isn’t any etiquette that says that I must.

I want to know that following you isn’t going to be a waste of time.  There is so much content in the world, and short content on twitter that I just don’t want to sit there sifting through the collected musings of someone who talks rubbish.

I’ll follow you if you are interesting

If you’re not interesting, I won’t follow you! Simple as.

Don’t go complaining if I don’t follow you.  I’m not in this to get the most friends.

I’m also not going to tell you what I find interesting right here. To find that out, read my twitter stream at http://twitter.com/PaulDJohnston

However, if you have a high ratio of followers to friends, then I might be very intrigued, and at that point you become interesting. So there’s a chink of light, if you are already interesting to others.

Auto @Replies

The Auto @Replies systems that email you whenever there is an @reply in a twitter with your username are far more useful for me. That’s how it should work. There is no expectation that you have to follow anyone then. The contact can still be made. That’s far more useful than auto-follow.

Serendipity

The idea that we can find people through chance is accomplished through the Twitter search function and the ReTweet function that has grown up. Hashtags allow you to find people related to a specific subject as well, so there’s self-organising things around Twitter that allow this to happen.

I am making a stand. I will not follow someone just because they have followed me.  I tried it for a while and it was rubbish. It does not add value and it will not make sense longer term.

I will follow whomsoever I choose

Of course, you can follow me anytime you like! I am @PaulDJohnston on Twitter!

For more people to follow, see my #followfriday search stream!

Hoping that ping.fm is going to be a really good way to manage content on multiple sites

Reassessing My Online Profile – Part 2

Read this first: Reassessing My Online Profile

I enjoy blogging, but I much prefer tweeting about my life. I find it much easier to keep things short and not waste my time ranting about stuff on a blog (which is what tends to happen). However, I’ve come to an interesting crossroads in my career…

No More Work

For the first time in 8 years, I leapt out of the “running a business” world into the “being employed” world last December. I have amassed enough experience to be seen by some very big companies as a Web Strategist and Consultant and to be employed to run a department producing Web Strategy and Delivering Websites for Blue Chip clients.

So I essentially moth-balled my business life and went to this job. The company went into Administration after me being there 7 weeks (about 3 weeks ago) and has left me with no business, has not paid for part of my time there and I now have no money.

Not a sob story

I’m not asking for sympathy here (although it’s nice – I’d prefer some consultancy work)! There are many in my situation in the economic climate, without work and without any means of earning any. I’ve run a business before and I know how things can change quickly, but it has to be the right change.  Starting a business from scratch (again) is not a prospect I will take on lightly.

Where to now?

I’ve spent a long time over the past few weeks looking for a new job, or wondering how I can restart my business. There are many options, but not all are appropriate. The job market is shocking at the moment, and the last interview I went to, I was asked how long I was going to stay, as my CV just looked too good. Reading between the lines, I’m concerned that I’ve set my sights too low!

I do think my online profile is key to my next steps, but the question is…

What should I do now?

In the spirit of the internet, I should probably crowdsource my answer, and get those that read my blog and my twitter stream and know me (or at least, know my online persona) to help me out now. Answering questions for me like:

• What do you think I’m good at?
• What area do you think I add the most value to a business?
• If you were to start a new business now, what sector would you focus on?
• Should I just pack it all in and do something completely different?

I’m not sure that will necessarily help though!

Oh, and if anyone else says “do what you love” I shall scream – love and money do not always go hand in hand!

How should my profile change?

If I’m going to change, then I need to change what I talk about, and promote myself more. I’ve been told that I’m very bad at promoting myself but an excellent motivator and inspirational about how to utilise new technologies. Maybe I just need to learn some of the tricks of the online marketers who dominate because they spew out rubbish.

What I really want to do

If I’m honest, what I really want to do is setup a start-up business. But the key to a start-up is having a working idea/prototype, and almost all my ideas are currently not at that stage. I’d love to be involved in a start-up though, so if there are start-ups that require someone who is blue-chip consultant level then get in touch.  Sales, marketing, PR, technical architect, strategy… any area.

My Linked In profile

User Experience and Data is better than Flash

I’ve spent the last few weeks working as the Head of Digital in a marketing and communications agency. The company (which I shall not mention) has just gone into administration, and owes me this month’s wages, so I’m not very happy with them.

The digital output of this company was very interesting. The company’s clients tended to be large corporates, and as such, the output was very corporate.  These kind of corporates, outside of the tech sector, do not often know a lot about trends in the market place, and as such expect a lot from an agency in terms of consultancy.

Flash

A lot of expectation was placed in our agency on the ability to produce great Flash content. This puzzled me a lot, given that Flash is only a part of the mix of a website. The main aim of most brand/corporate websites is to sell, or at the very least, to get people to contact and interact with the company.

The flash element is important as visual experience is often a good way to engage with an audience, but it’s not the only thing that matters. If flash is just a hook, then the rest of the website and user experience has to live up to that initial content.  You can’t put a flash movie of Lindsay Lohan or Britney Spears onto a site, and then expect a visitor to just buy a car because it’s cool content.

User Experience and Data

Users want a good experience, and that means that you give them what they want, not what you think they need.  Alexa.com has an interesting set of sites in it’s Global top 500, these can be broken down into 3 major categories:

• search engines
• social sites
• porn/adult sites

Simply put, people want to search, or to interact, or to have sex. The key to pointing this out is that Flash is not the overall key to most of these sites, except with sites like YouTube and even the the Flash is an enhancement and not a hook.

The key to the sites above, is actually that they provide people with valuable data. Search Engines allow users to find sites and provide that data to them, and Social Sites allow you to find and interact with friends, family and colleagues.  Let’s not go into the other one, it’s obvious!

Data is the key element, both capturing and providing data. Flash isn’t great at that, as most people just want the data, not a cool interface for it.  In fact, most people just want the data as quickly as possible!

Flash as Enhancement – Data is Key

So, the upshot of this? Flash must be used to enhance, not just to hook. If the website service/product isn’t good in terms of user experience, then making great Flash is just throwing pearls after swine.

Data is what people want and they want it now!