SxDSalon: A group blog on social interaction design

If twitter is micro-blogging, is Buzz micro-commentary?

After spending more time in Buzz I thought I would share a couple observations on the sociality of Buzz in comparison to that of twitter. Notable, and obvious to Buzz users, will be that Buzz is more conversational. It has a lot in common with Friendfeed, in that threaded comments accrue to popular posts in a self-reinforcing manner. The more commented the post, the more attention it gets.This is interesting in that the sociality in Buzz, which is based on the social graph of gmail + followers, ...

Breaking down the Gbuzz

I am aware of the irony of posting about the the buzz on Google Buzz this week. But there's no other way to contribute than to heap yet more on the pile.I'll skip over the many good points that have been raised this week within buzz and alongside it. If you are reading this, you have probably read them.I want simply to make a few observations about the Buzz user experience, some of which are simply unavoidable, and many of which belong to the "conversation" space in general.Talk is a difficult t...

The socially-mediated NYTimes: What would interest the reader?

The New York Times has just published an interesting piece on why readers email articles. The research (Social Transmission and Viral Culture) was conducted by Jonah Berger and Katherine A. Milkman of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. In the Times article, Will You Be E-Mailing This Column? It's Awesome, author John Tierney summarizes some of the study's surprising conclusions.According to Tierney, the study examined reasons behind which articles are emailed most by readers. It ad...

“Social” can’t be solved by an algorithm

I was contacted by a dutch journalist who’s writing an article on the merits of social interaction versus search engines. She read a paper of mine and emailed me with two questions. I thought it’d be useful to post my reply publicly: First, do you think search engines making use of social networks will improve search results and thus make our daily life a bit easier? Yes! A lot of fact finding and information discovery already comes from friends, colleagues, and even acquaintance...

New Presence patterns in the Yahoo! Pattern Library

We just published two new social patterns in a new category, called Presence (under People), in the Yahoo! Design Pattern Library. The two patterns are Availability and Updates. The Design Pattern Library is a collection of guidelines for the design of online interactions that can aid decision-making and guide the work of web developers and designers. I’ve been studying the concept of “Presence” (often meaning remote presence – telepresences – or digitally med...

FB new privacy settings – a contrarian positive view

Facebook’s privacy changes are drawing a lot of fire, but they work pretty well for me, and are at bottom a positive change. But the way Facebook presents these changes is untrustworthy, and makes the company seem even more untrustworthy than they are being. Facebook now makes it easier for you to share information with the world, and to make that choice on a post-by-post basis, and to share posts with a specific set of people. In the past, I didn’t share much on Facebook because ...

Unintended Side Effects

I have been presenting the material from our book over the last several months and have been asked questions about some of the anti-patterns and how we avoid or solve them. Most recently at Web 2.0, I was talking with a bunch of smart, interesting people and a few things have bubbled up that I think are worth poking at that we need to pay attention to as “social” becomes more ubiquitous. Issue 1: Authentication Service Hell The first is the UI and conceptual quagmire we have inadve...

Social search and advertising: Google’s endgame?

A few weeks back, Jeremiah Owyang wrote a piece "Revealing Google's Stealth Social Network Play." In it he detailed the tactical benefits of a combined of Google Reader, Wave, and Sidewiki in a back-door strategy aimed at social networking. And more to the point, to realizing the advertising opportunities around social networking.Google has been neither a leader nor a even a decent case study in social networking. It's home-grown social network, Orkut, is popular elsewhere but not here. Open Soc...

How Facebook integrates FriendFeed – Discovery vs. Privacy

This week, FriendFeed co-founder Paul Buchheit popped up on FriendFeed to let folk know that developers are quietly at work on a couple of longer-term projects that will help bring FriendFeedy goodness to the larger world. There has been a lot of discussion about the dropoff in FriendFeed traffic since the Facebook acquisition, and the appearance was intended to reassure the community. People weren’t reassured, not only because Buchheit didn’t share any details about what they’...

Foursquare vs Yelp: Recommendations and Reviews

Foursquare and Yelp are each sites that capitalize on user-contributed reviews and recommendations. Users contribute their favorite places and things to do, spotlighting best-kept secrets and customer favorites. Users get visibility and even some amount of notoriety for their contributions. Their enthusiasm for, or against, a merchant can have substantial repercussions for businesses. In the age of social media, might sometimes makes right, whether the customer is "right" or not.Social interacti...