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.

Difficult Social Media Questions

After reading Andy Piper’s blog I found one of his delicious links very intriguing:

Ten Questions Not To Ask A Social Media Panel

It’s basically asking difficult questions around the subject of how Social Media is seen in the advertising/marketing world.  Things like “How do you plan a Social Media Campaign?” and “What’s a friend worth?”.

All really valid questions, but it does raise some interesting points. The best part of the article is the comments though.  Why? Because they bring more pertinent information out about the state of the market and how executives and corporates see the Social Media world.  Especially F100 companies in the US (and therefore FTSE100 in the UK).

I recently had the opportunity to sit in a marketing meeting with a large clothing retailer in the UK.  It was an odd meeting as they were being sold a marketing campaign around real metrics (100k+ people) with the aim of “getting more email addresses”.  In other words, sending an email out with a 50% off voucher, and “send to a friend” emails.  The aim was to increase the number of people they could spam to.  How very 1990s.

The interesting thing is that this ideas is self-perpetuating for the marketing company (not the brand).  If you get a whole load of email addresses in one campaign, you’re going to do the same campaign the next time.  What happens when email becomes less important?  What happens when all the important conversation is on Facebook, or worse, distributed over different social networks?

The conversation then turned to Facebook because the key demographic fits the Facebook profile.  Their question was “How do we use it?”.  I think there’s a fundamental flaw in that exact question.  In the end, I advised the company not to even go near thinking about engaging with Facebook (or any other Social Media) unless it was going to change it’s entire marketing approach. Why? Because people are far less easy to fool directly (on a 1 to 1 basis), rather than as a crowd.   Social Media works at the 1 to 1 level.

Social Media is not to be used, it’s to be engaged with.  It’s not to be controlled, it’s to be released.  It’s not for trying to get more “customers” it’s for trying to create brand advocates.  It’s higher risk, but with much higher reward.

Brands and Companies need to realise that Social Media is not a “strategy” that is either easy or non-disruptive to their organisation. There is no easy way to start a “campaign” – and as the blog post says, there’s no guarantee that there is such a thing as a “campaign” in Social Media.

So, how do you incorporate Social Media into your brand or company? I think I’ll leave that for the next blog.