Don with 'King' at Arsenal Box

Don with 'King' at Arsenal Box
Originally uploaded by craighepburn

So here is the situation, i am at the last Arsenal home game of the season at the Emirates stadium. I am enjoying a quiet drink with some friends in one of the many boxes around the stadium and then it happened......out of the blue some very loud familiar american dude shouting "OH MY GOD" with US and UK flags comes over to where i was sitting and requests a picture with me. Now usually i would refuse such a request but on this occasion and due to the fact he knows some well 'dodgy' gangsters i decided to pose for the shot. :-)

Could facebook chat undermine news feed

As normal i booted up the old PC this morning, launched firefox and checked my newsfeed of Facebook....and then there it was in a big yellow box on the bottom right hand side of my browser - a notification that facebook chat was now live.

I instantly thought 'Nightmare' and posted my views on twitter " facebook chat - just what we need another distraction. Extreme Social Media Distraction Syndrome is rife!" As a user i like facebook as it can be used to keep you up to date with events, friends, social occasions, news and have a bit of fun with pictures and games. The killer application is the new feed which delivers succinct snippets of information based on your friends profiles, this is updated by users to communicate to their connections. Now from research we have done here within our company in the youth and student market we have established that people enjoy the non real time and have tended to move away from email and chat when communicating with friends. I will cover the reasons for this in a later post but essentially this is related to real time distraction.

Facebook chat could actually undermine the news feed by allowing the user to communicate in real time. Now i agree that chat and the news feed have completely different purposes but you would be amazed at the number of people i speak with who don't even understand what communications tools they are using and the best practice for purpose on various methods. It will be interesting to see what the impact of the one2many news feed has when users adopt a real time one2one facebook chat option instead.

An example i have just experienced this morning - so here is the scenario.... Im looking to hook up with my friend Carl in the next couple of weeks so i would normally post a message on his wall and wait for his response, now the key here is that all our common friends will see we are meeting up and join us - but with facebook chat i might now use facebook messaging instead meaning the information does not get viewed by the many. I also agree that people already use MSN, SKYPE, google talk and other IM technology in conjunction with facebook but by having this feature plugged in to the site i believe it will have a fundamental change in user behaviour. It will be very interesting to watch over the coming weeks and i will keep you all posted.

Then there is the whole angle on employee distraction which is massive in my opinion - up until now i have been able to defend the use of facebook access to employees due to the nature of our business and our demographics but we have removed the use of MSN and other chat due to security and employee distraction but i would find it difficult to defend now with facebook chat integrated with the site.

Would be great to hear your views and comments on your experience with facebook chat over the coming weeks and months.

Cheers Craig.


Below is a the official FB press release for chat.

This week marks the launch of Facebook Chat—a new way for you to communicate with your friends in real-time. The Wall and Inbox have been the primary ways to communicate, but when more immediacy is necessary—for example when making plans for lunch in half an hour or arguing over a foul call in the NCAA tournament—they might not be enough. Chat aims to fill this gap.

We'll be rolling this out slowly going forward, but fairly soon you'll notice our new Chat bar at the bottom of your browser—no installation or assembly required. From this bar you can view your list of online friends and open conversations with any or all of them. There's no need to setup a "buddy list." Unlike the Wall or Inbox, the messages are delivered and displayed to your friend as soon as they're sent, so you should expect a response right away and without any page loading. Of course, Chat has to play nice with the rest of the Facebook experience. You can collapse conversations to get them out of the way, and go offline if you don't want to use Chat at all. Chat is there when you want it, and tucked away when you don't.

Web2.0 could be worth £2.3 Billion by 2013

The recent report by Forrester which suggests the web2.0 and social computing market could be worth as much as £2.3 billion over the next five years is no surprise to anyone engrossed in this space. I would even go as far to say that this is a conservative estimate from my knowledge of the recent benefit to commercial organisations such as the travel and leisure industry.

The key is having the knowledge, skills and education within companies to leverage these benefits, companies that decide to jump on the bandwagon without these key areas will both struggle and possibly damage their brand in the process. Social computing and web2.0 is not just about technology it is largely about people, collaboration and managing information. The best example of this being Wikipedia where without the people, collaboration or content management would never have been possible.

Web 2.0 market will be worth £2.3bn by 2013, Forrester says

Business spending on Web 2.0 technologies will rise over the next five years, growing 43% each year to reach £2.3bn globally by 2013, according to Forrester Research.

The five-year forecast projected that business spending on social networking technologies, RSS, blogs, wikis, mashups and podcasting will rise as firms try to gain a competitive advantage from social networking technologies by connecting closer with customers and improving employee collaboration.

"Social computing and Web 2.0 marketing is still in its infancy, and in general, the market is still in an experimentation phase, but in the long run, the effect of Web 2.0 will be enormous," said Forrester Research Analyst Oliver Young.

Large enterprises such as General Motors, McDonald's, Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance and Wells Fargo have all made heavy use of these tools, and 56% of North American and European enterprises consider Web 2.0 to be a priority in 2008, according to the study.

Currently, large businesses are spending more on employee collaboration tools than customer-facing Web 2.0 technologies, but Forrester expects that trend to reverse by next year. By 2013, investment in customer-facing Web 2.0 technology will dwarf spending on internal collaboration software by nearly a billion dollars.

Source : Computer Weekly

Twitter + Friendfeed = Social Search

I have been reading some fascinating blogs and and websites recently on social search engines. New search engines such as Maholo.com. Mahalo is a human-powered search engine that creates organized, comprehensive, and spam free search results for the most popular search terms. Our search results only include great links.

I still feel that current search technology is poor and i spend so much time each day filtering through the noise to get the information i am looking for. Now recently i have been using twitter, friendfeed and other social services where i am connected or following specific people or organisations which in turn has helped me pro actively seek out new and interesting information that i would never have know about. In other words a human social pro active search engine....phwuuu now that's a mouth full. Over the past 4 weeks i have heard about 8 up and coming events i am interested in, 5 whitepapers on web technology, 27 new interesting website, 64 blogs and a whole host of interesting snippets and facts which have helped me in my current role. Some people may think of this as a distraction but what is more distracting people providing you informative content or 3 hours a day doing hundreds of google searches only to be left wanting!

Searching for the Social Search Engine

Map_of_the_world_wide_web_2 The Internet is a big place, and expanding every hour. Because it is so vast, and the resources out there are so many, it's in everyone's best interest -- other than SEO gamers -- to arrive at the best possible search results.

Companies already know this, of course. They work hard at coding their sites with the right keywords - those that depict what they do best - so you can find them.

We've already discussed Yahoo!Search initiative for an open search ecosystem, one based on semantic web standards. This kind of search will comb the next generation of internally tagged web documents for their meaning, not just word patterns. Mahalo is an example of a next-generation search engine whose results are the output of human decisions.

Read the rest at http://www.conversationagent.com/2008/04/searching-for-t.html

Breaking News 02 Screw up new billing system

Some breaking news that i thought would be a worthy post.

02 the UK mobile network provider and current distributor of the apple iPhone in the UK has screwed the migration to a new billing system. It appears this has causes all tariff details for customers to be lost. Not received any more details but if anyone is having issues with o2 currently please let me know.

Will update as the story unfolds.

Thanks

Craig

The BBC get personal with website relaunch.

In the office we have been discussing the new release of the BBC website and there have been some mixed reactions on the changes to the design, layout and personalisation. In the interests of research i decided to ask my peers on LinkedIn what they thought. Below are the responses i have had so far.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts or comments.

Q. Do you think the BBC website is now easier or more difficult to use?

With the recent changes to the BBC website i would be very interested to hear your thoughts on the changes and if you feel this level of personalisation is too complicated for most users to understand? I am an advocate of allowing complete flexibility to the user in how they display information as google homepages and pageflakes have had for some time. But do you feel the majority of web users will understand the benefits of this and take advantage of the technology?

Answers (7)

Chris Wistow

I would say no. I think the average internet user is no longer a 'newbie' and has reasonable amount of browser navigation experience online.

You also have sites like igoogle, netvibes and the like who've been educating users for some time with customisable interfaces. Ontop of this, one would think that the BBC undertook a huge amount of usability testing before launching onto the wider public.

Perhaps somthing that is missing from the new site is some more detailed online demonstrations for less advanced users showing how they can customise the page and why this benefits them.


Roy Scheeren

Webdesigner at Stardekk

I love the front page. Probably not all users are going to be able to use all features. My parents for instance wouldn't have a clue untill they got it explained by someone like me. However I feel a great deal of people will love it and another great deal will learn to love it.

Every new technology needs some time to get used to, but hey it's not quantum physics now, is it?

What I don't get is why they haven't taken this concept throughout the whole site. As soon as you click on a news item you get back to the "old" website with no personalisation blocks which means you have to click back to find other items on your homepage you might have been interested in. That's why I love the preview box in iGoogle so much.

I feel the underlying pages also need some room for your own boxes.


Han Tuttel

ICT Manager - RE/MAX Nederland (www.remax.nl)

WOW - this is damn kewhl and fancy.
I like it, and find it pretty intuitive. I am certain users will understand this.

In fact, I am gonna 'steel' (as in use) some ideas from this for my own sites. Thanx :-)


Didier Masse

Global e-communications Manager - Web Project Manager

I really like the new design and I would say that I would say the front page is a lot more user-friendly and less complicated than the other Radio pages.

Will the Front page format be the future template for other pages within the BBC site ? Radio and so on ? I can recognise that for elderly people or people feeling uneasy about navigating within Websites, that's a little bit reluctant to go further in Radio pages.


Oliver Southgate

Digital Development Manager at Haymarket Publishing

I believe that although it is not anything new in terms of functionality (i.e. Been around for a while with the likes of PageFlakes and NetVibes) but what they have done is put it in front of inexperienced users in a way that is simple.

They have taken away the complexities of iGoogle, netvibes etc, and are now pushing the concepts of customisation/personalisation to an uneducated audience. Not only that, it looks bloody fantastic.

I look forward to the continual updates they will be making to see what else they are doing, glad they haven’t done a big bang approach.

Well done the BBC (glad to see my license fee has some good benefits )

Paul Collins

Owner, All about Croydon

I agree with Chris, At first it looks all great but many of it's users will not understand or use the new personal controls it offers. The BBC site has I think taken a step towards the future users - not todays. By adding these controls now, it will be able to develope and train people over time to use these extra functions.


Hamish Taylor

Consultant

I find it a significant improvement - much better clarity, functionality and the user-customisable options are simple to self-select and use.

Only slight negative is that I think there is now just a wee bit too much white space, resulting in the inevitable scrolling - but that may be about me just tweaking the zoom settings on my browser.

Overall big improvement and a good indicator of more to come in the future.

Also I like and regularly use the BBC iPlayer function that is only available in the UK I believe.
Links:

* http://www.shinergise.com

EMI Appoint top Google Exective to run digital strategy

I have read today that EMI have appointed Douglas Merrill to head up their digital strategy which i believe believe could have a major impact on the music industry as a whole. Finally the music industry will have a proven digital expert who gets the web.

Who else believes that we could soon be downloading music for free and instead opting to have advertising placed in between tracks based on our music taste, surfing habits, likes, what friends we have on facebook, what we ordered from Tesco online and all that other great stuff.

The rise of "freeconomics" is being driven by the underlying technologies that power the web and as music becomes digital native, over time music tracks and albums will be free or at least so cheap that it becomes negligible. Companies will have to look at how they commoditise other areas around digital music and to do this they will have to innovate and work with the web community in defining this new business model. I imagine Douglas Merrill has a lot of experience in this area which can only benefit both the consumer and the music industry.

Areas such as email, digital storage, software, air travel and mobile phones have all had to adapt to the model of free to ensure their survival and the music industry really missed a massive opportunity early on in the development of the MP3 format to embrace this and develop the digital music platforms. Instead they spent a long time fighting the these changes and in the end lost out. Their are many great bands and artists out their such as Prince and Radiohead who have recently changed the way music is distributed and paid for and they have been extremely successful so lets hope this appointment at EMI takes music out of the dark ages and into the digital revolution.

Google executive poached by EMI

EMI is keen to get more value from music downloads

Record label EMI has appointed a senior executive from Google to run its digital strategy, the first time such a post has been created at the firm.

Douglas Merrill, who led Google's successful stock market listing in 2004, will take up his post on 28 April at EMI's Los Angeles office.

The move is part of EMI's private equity owner Guy Hands efforts to rebuild the troubled firm.

He bought EMI, whose artists include Kylie Minogue, for £3.2bn last year.

Mr Hands welcomed the new recruit, calling him a "proven agent of change".

"He has been a key member of the management team at Google which has created more value than any other consumer internet company by focusing relentlessly on tools that enable consumers to do things more effectively," he said.

Mr Merrill said: "I have two passions. One is creating platforms and tools that make it easier for consumers to achieve their goals. The other is music.

Read more on the BBC....

Speaking Freely on Spinvox

Below is my first attempt at using spinvox to update my blog via mobile, for my first attempt and strong Glaswegian accent is has not done to badly. I need to be quicker though and pronounce my words more clearly. I will be attempting to brush up on my voice to blog skills over the coming weeks. Keep posted.

"Hi, this is Craig. I'm just currently at the office doing some final emails. I just wanted to post this final blog of the day. Some emails that I've been reading today around free business from 0 by Chris Anderson and some other ___ I'm hoping to sort of read it on the way home at Net magazine. I'll"

spoken through SpinVox