Facebook really loves to play Popularity Police. If you don’t like enough of a Page’s posts, they stop showing in […]
Critique: Bit.ly’s Fugu Redesign
May 3rd, 2010
It appears the redesign bug is going around. Just a couple of weeks ago one of my favorite online services, Pandora Radio, tweaked their site design. Now Bit.ly, another of my most frequented sites, has revamped their interface as well in what they’re calling the Fugu edition. Below is a screenshot of the site as it looked last Friday, followed by one taken this evening.
My initial reaction to their redesign was negative, though that didn’t last more than a few moments; I liked the simplicity of the previous design, and the change caught me off-guard. After I did a quick double-take of the URL and got over my culture-shock, I decided to take a look at what’s changed. Fortunately for me, Bit.ly set up a largely visual tour of their features for new and returning visitors – this is the first change and surely a positive one.
Making Their Services Obvious
The first page of the tour makes it instantly clear what URL shortening is all about, and that this particular URL shortening site has a lot to offer beyond just creating smaller links. Searching and tracking of previously shortened links along with a handy sidebar widget are all features which, I believe, existed before. Now, however, they are brought to the forefront both through the tour and on the homepage.
From the homepage, the reporting service is found under the second of just two tabs along the top, in a a lovely place of prominence on the Manage page. Meanwhile the new colors, positioning, and bolding draw attention to the widget and the search features in the sidebar, as well as a link to the tour. Bit.ly is plainly hoping to increase interaction across their site’s features and build value for themselves above their competitors. I’d like to see a link to reporting on the main page, and perhaps something more descriptive than “Manage” for the second tab, but I’d say they’re doing a good job overall.
Rating: 4 out of 5
Colors and What They Tell Us
The color scheme hasn’t changed much, but the use to which those colors are being put has altered rather dramatically. The bright, friendly blue is now featured much more prominently. The gray behind the URL input is no longer flat, but a very “2.0ish” gradient. Bright orange complements the blue and draws the eye to the sidebar widget.
Examining the visual importance of the widget call-t0-action leads me to believe that Bit.ly is more concerned with users accessing and saving that widget than with users actually shortening URLs from the site. This makes sense, as a shortened URL is a completed action and does not necessarily indicate a return visit; a sidebar widget, however, practically guarantees that the visitor will use the service again.
The URL text field itself, the secondary call-to-action and most likely reason for a visit, is immense and not to be missed. Fortunately, the colors used for the text field are gentle and pleasing; it is obvious, but not overpowering.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Functionality
To be honest, all I did on Bit.ly before the redesign was paste my long URL, copy the shorter one, and leave, with the occasional five to ten seconds spared to see how many clicks my most recent shortened links got. It’s quite possible I’ll call something new that was actually here before. Either way, though, I’m taking notice of things I didn’t see before, which shows they did something right.
Bit.ly added the ability to tweet directly from the URL shorter text field, adding a character count to facilitate it and enabling linking of multiple Twitter accounts. This adds immense value to the service and the potential to speed up the URL shortening-using process even more. They also mention in the tour that Facebook integration is coming soon
I really like the slick new action animations on the site. They are understated and smooth but make the site more fun to interact with. “Fun” may seem trivial, but it’s a key component to reducing bounce rate and encouraging repeat visits.
Another nice feature, one which may have been around all along, is the ability to customize your shortened link into something human-readable – very cool.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Bit.ly Pro?
A final intriguing addition that I’ll mention is a link along the top to Bit.ly Pro. Clicking on this link leads the visitor to Bit.ly Pro Beta, a (very black and dramatic) page that doesn’t immediately make clear what differentiates it from Bit.ly standard. Being the curious sort of user that I am, I clicked on the “Sign Up for Free” button, but it seems their beta program is currently closed. The “More Info” page is rather vague, so I guess I’ll have to wait a while to see what nifty features are being demoed in Pro and the briefly mentioned paid Pro Enterprise versions.
Rating: ?
Edit: I’m a bit tired, so I missed the Bit.ly blog post detailing just what Bit.ly Pro does. Oops!
Conclusion
The new changes add relevancy to the Social Web and make the site’s advanced features more readily apparent and appealing.
I’ve been using and enjoying Bit.ly for only about six months now, and over that time I’ve already developed an affection for the efficient, friendly site. The recent changes show that Bit.ly is concerned with staying relevant and continuing to add value to their site. This, coupled with a healthy dose of TLC on the part of the developers that shows through the site’s interface, has only served to cement that affection. Well done, Bit.ly! Keep up the good work (and let me into your new beta! ;)
Bit.ly, 2008, Courtesy of Archive.org. The little puffer fish has come a long way!
I’d love to hear your thoughts on the design. Did I miss any important points? Don’t be shy to leave a comment below!
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Your Tweet Is Important To Us!
3 Reasons Automatic DMs
Are Evil
April 13th, 2010
Okay, I’ve got to get this one out there. It’s a bit of a rant and I hope you’ll forgive me for it, but apparently I’m not the only one who feels this way. I run two Twitter accounts of my own and one for my workplace, and if there’s one thing I don’t like (besides neon green backgrounds, spam, and people begging for retweets), it’s getting hit with an auto direct message (DM) when I follow someone. I understand the idea behind it; I get that they’re often trying to show their new follower that, hey, they’re really glad s/he followed. But most of these auto-reply messages leave me feeling played the dupe at best and solicited to at worst. A couple of my favorites:
“Thanks 4 following ;-) Interesting profile, what is 1 thing you LOVE about your life? Here is an amazing FREE ebook on creating great websit” (Notice four distinct topics ending in a cut-off at the character limit.)
“Hi [username], Want AUTOMATED TARGETED FOLLWERS & autopost,mimic users,DM spam filter,[product name] [website] FREE vers ROCKS!” (DM spam filter? Oh irony!)
Here are three reasons I hate automated direct messages, and three things you should avoid doing to your new followers, whether you auto-DM or not.
1. Hi, I’m Awesome!
These messages are usually full of personal promotion. “Hey, thanks for following, check out my blog and my website and my facebook!” It’s sort of like walking up to someone in a room and being greeted with a barrage of why that person thinks s/he is so awesome – and hey, have I shown you the pictures of my kids? It’s just rude! If I’m interested in your website, I’ll click the link from your profile, or follow a link from one of your tweets about that awesome new blog post you just wrote or the new pictures you added to Facebook from the company picnic. As in any relationship, if you want to make the other person feel valued, show interest in them first and frequently!
2. Your Call Is Important to Us!
I’ve tried responding to these auto-DMs, and I’ve never been acknowledged. I’m left feeling about as valued as the customer who’s been transferred twice and on hold for an hour when the message comes on for the 50th time saying “Your call is important to us!” Right, I can tell. Clearly, the hold message is just an attempt to appease irritated customers, not an honest fact. Just as clearly, the direct message was not an overture of friendship, an outreach to strengthen the new social connection; it was nothing more than a marketing ploy. Trust me when I say, most consumers now-a-days know enough to call a pond wet when they see one.
3. Talk to the Hand, ‘Cause the Face Was Never Listening
Twitter is first and foremost a social platform. It requires that you actually be social on it now and again. In most of these cases, an auto-DM is nothing more than a cop out, a way to make your new followers feel important and noticed when in fact you don’t give a monkey’s tail about them. Now I’m a busy professional, and I don’t have time to hang out on Twitter all day, trying to be one of the cool kids; it’s no crime if you don’t either. Most days, I interact as I’m able and schedule a few tweets to post throughout the day, primarily so I won’t slam my followers with an avalanche of content every evening. But there’s the difference: In this case, the content is created with care by me, and the scheduling is done with my followers in mind. In the case of the auto-DM, it’s usually an entirely self-centered act meant to automate the annoying process of actually speaking with people.
Are Automated Direct Messages Always Evil?
In very specific circumstances auto DMs can add value. Just the other day I followed WordPress.org on Twitter and received an informative DM telling me where to find technical support and explaining that WordPress.com has a separate account. This automatically generated message contained valuable information and didn’t bother me in the slightest. What’s the difference? The message was written entirely with the needs of the follower in mind. It was not a plug for a website. It was not trying to cut corners by providing an artificial welcome. It was not trying to substitute human conversation. In short, it was user-centric, and it was honest.
If you’re one of the rare people who manages to have an automatic direct message set up while avoiding the above pitfalls, more power to you. However, there are plenty of people who will actually un-follow a person immediately if they receive one of the annoying little messages. It smacks of spam and clutters up a person’s email if they have notifications turned on. And really, does anyone like the feeling of let-down when you see a new DM waiting for you only to realize it’s just auto-generated? I suggest we all keep genuine and engage honestly or not at all.
What are your thoughts on automatic direct messages? Have you been greeted by a DM you knew was automated, but that you still appreciated? Do they drive you crazy? Do you yourself use automatic DMs? I would love to hear your opinion and experiences.
Tweeting MIX10: 10 Things I Learned Live-Blogging on Twitter
March 19th, 2010
When I went to Microsoft MIX10, I thought I would try a little Twitter experiment. I had a virgin Twitter account newly created for my freelance business. It had no followers and no content, so I had nothing to lose by trying something different from the usual “here’s another list of logos” posts I usually find in design-oriented Twitter accounts (well, it’s usually either that or what kind of sandwich the designer had for lunch – not that I mind either one). Since I set up both that and my blog literally just weeks before MIX, I decided to hit the ground running by launching with MIX10 content. My plan was to live-blog the event, but on my Twitter account rather than my blog. I thought it would be a great way to build quality content fast; it’s something that would be relevant and searched, others would find it interesting and useful if they were unable to attend, and I’d be forced to spend a little more time digesting what I was experiencing. What I didn’t realize was that because of the sheer volume of tweets needed to effectively live-blog each session, I would have over 390 tweets at the end of just four days.
It proved to be a valuable experience, if an exhausting one. Along the way, I learned a few things about “live-tweeting” and how to live tweet.
1) Live-Tweeting helped me assimilate the content. Taking notes is helpful for remembering points and concepts, but tweeting every nugget of information actually forced me to digest it more deeply. Communicating a point to someone else (aka teaching) is one of the best ways to cement concepts, as it causes the brain to form deeper and more personal connections than in passive listening or note-taking. Although the communication in this case was rapid and succinct, I came away with better recall of the sessions than I usually have.
2) Presentations actually distill pretty well into 140 character chunks, although some on-the-fly rewording/reorganizing was necessary. Most presentations are built around bullet points and memorable phrases, lending themselves to display as short snippets of information. However, simply tweeting bullets isn’t always enough to get the speaker’s point across, just as reading a slideshow without the talk usually isn’t very helpful. Sometimes a little creativity is required to provide value, and I felt that was critical.
3) Live-Tweeting kept me in the mix. Since I was on my Twitter account nearly every minute I was at MIX10, I got to be a part of the larger conversations that took place under the #MIX10 tag throughout the conference. This was most entertaining during the big keynote events, when the conversation streamed past in a constant flow of opinions, comments, and informative tweets. I was instantly able to see what others thought was important, funny, or interesting in some way, which is interesting in itself. In addition, I felt like I was part of a much larger community experience, even though I never once during the keynotes themselves turned to comment directly to my neighbors. Later on, I also got to be a part of the very cool Fantastic Tavern Las Vegas event because I saw it being tweeted about.
4) Twitter tools are essential to get the most out of live-tweeting. I used Seesmic throughout most of MIX10, a tool which let me see @mentions, a search feed targeting MIX10, and my own sent messages simultaneously. This saved me from bouncing between tabs or pages to keep up with the bigger conversation, and kept me updated on mentions which I otherwise probably wouldn’t have noticed in time for them to be useful (in fact I did miss a couple on the first day before using Seesmic). I figured that live-tweeting has to be lightning fast to be useful, and there just isn’t time for all that page loading and swapping.
5) Copy-paste is a double edged sword. I used copy-paste to speed up my tweeting time. During each session, I had a notepad file open with the prefix I was using (in the format “#MIX10 Session Name: “) to save typing and keep consistency in my tweets. I usually copy-pasted from my session notes to the file, edited the note into a sensible, 140 character, content-packed tweet, and then copy-pasted that into my Twitter feed. I had one incident, however, when I was posting a list of 10 things which, unfortunately, had about three number sixes and I believe ended with a couple of number eights.
6) I should have suffixed, not prefixed my tweets with the session name. Looking over the tweets from the event, I find them much harder to skim than they otherwise would have been.With such short messages, just the session name (or shortened version) took up the first quarter to third of the tweet. At a quick glance, huge blocks look identical because readers have to scan into the middle of the tweets before they differ.
7) I needed a camera. Unfortunately, the only camera I have is a five year old, 5 mega-pixel digital fossil that not only produces grainy pictures, but utterly fails at wide or distance shots (most of what I would have been photographing). Pictures would have added color and context to the feed. In addition, there were a couple of times when a photograph of a slide would have saved me from losing information forever.
8) People did appreciate it. I was a bit worried that people would see my extreme number of tweets as spam, but the only feedback I received was positive. In fact, one person told me that he was watching one of my session tweets practically on the edge of his seat, wishing he had gone to that one instead. I went from about five spam and a couple of “thanks for following me” followers on day 1 to around 70 legitimately interested folks. It remains to be seen how many of these will stick around now that the event is over.
9) Live-Tweeting should probably never be done with a primary Twitter account. I’m certain I only received a positive reaction to such thorough live-blogging on Twitter because I had a fresh account with no followers. If I’d had followers to begin with, I’m sure I would have lost them all from the sheer volume of tweets. If I do something like this again, I’ll create a separate account dedicated to live-blogging only.
10) Live-Tweeting is exhausting. Between taking my own notes and keeping live-tweets flowing as close to real-time as I could, I felt like I’d run a marathon after every session. As I mentioned above, I felt that live-tweeting should be as fast as humanly possible, but I was also trying to process and output complicated points. By the end of the day, I was completely mentally worn out.
The long and short of it is, although I had no idea what I was getting into when I started, it was a valuable experience. I hope I’ll have the chance to go to other events soon so I can do it again; it was a lot of fun, kept me involved with the greater conversation, and helped me assimilate the information better than I otherwise would have. Oh yeah, and it won me the MIXrockstar prize, to boot!*
If you’re interested in live-tweeting an event, also check out this article, “How to Live-Tweet an Event” by OldMediaNewTricks for a few more Twitter tips. You can also see the videos of the MIX10 event or visit my Twitter feed.
*If you’re wondering how or why, the MIXrockstar formula took into account number of tweets tagged #MIX10 as well as votes (despite being self-labeled as a popularity contest). Although I never had the intent to win anything, apparently pumping out over 390 relevant tweets in four days was enough to tip the scales in my favor. If it makes you feel any better, it feels weird to me, too.
Did you attend or virtually attend MIX10 and interact with Twitter while there? Have you live-tweeted yourself? Do you have other thoughts to share? I’d love to hear them! Don’t be shy; leave a comment below.
