Last week I wrote about How to prevent valueless design in social web sites. My main point was that most of the value people get from the sites comes over time from the interactions with other people, not from the sublimity of the visual design.

In that post, I used an analogy that pissed people off. I used the analogy that great-looking interfaces can at times be like a public speech out of touch with an audience…solidly executed but sending the wrong message…

Continue Reading: Can we talk about politics and design at the same time?

Did you know that February is Blogtipping month?

I didn’t, but Bokardoan Bill D’Alessandro, who writes the nice blog Ready, Fire, Aim, does. He wrote up Bokardo in his February is Blogtipping post, which from what I can tell is when you do a super quick review of a blog that you read and add a tip at the end (neat idea). Bill does exactly that, and points to probably the weakest part of my interface:

“I’m not sure I’m a fan of the excerpts on the front page. Some of them aren’t long enough to indicate the subject of the article. I’d suggest reducing the number of posts that appear on the frontpage, but including their full text.”

Bill’s right. I have to do something different with the excerpts…

Continue Reading: Bokardo has been cowblogtipped

A simple observation:

• Most of the judgments that we make about web sites are made quickly.
• Most of the value that people get from web sites happens over time.

3 years ago I wrote: The Dangers of Judging Web Designs Superficially.

Continue Reading: Judgment happens quickly, value happens over time

How an over-focus on technology and visual design can hide the real value of social software.

In a fascinating piece on the amazing growth of the photo-sharing site Fotolog, Jason Kottke clearly articulates a growing problem in design:

“Fotolog…relative to Flickr…has changed little in the past couple of years. Fotolog has groups and message boards, but they’re not done as well as Flickr’s and there’s no tags, no APIs, no JavaScript widgets, no “embed this photo on your blog/MySpace”, and no helpful Ajax design elements, all supposedly required elements for a successful site in the Web 2.0 era. Even now, Fotolog’s feature set and design remains planted firmly in Web 1.0 territory.”

How do sites with sub-optimal visual design and technology grow so big and become so successful?

Continue Reading: How to Prevent Valueless Design in Social Web Sites

Tagging is growing like wildfire on the Web. Maybe it can work on the desktop, too.

Continue Reading: Folksonomies in Mac OS X?

This is huge news: Digg is scrapping their top diggers list:

Kevin rose explains the decision…

Continue Reading: Digg Scraps Top Diggers List

In a Tagging Report released just yesterday, this number from the Pew Internet and American Life Project is astounding.

28% of online folks have tagged content (U.S)

At first glance this number seems extremely high. Over 1/4 of online Americans have tagged content? This is way more than the single digit %s (or lower) that have been reported previously (Dave Weinberger reports seeing 0.5%).

However, there may be more merit to the number than it may seem…

Continue Reading: Pew Study: 28% of Online Americans are Taggers

Yesterday I asked for an example of a scalable taxonomy.

Whether I meant to or not, I was assuming that the taxonomy’s cousin, the folksonomy, scales well. And most folks who wrote in or commented seemed to agree with that. So the next question is: are there any usable folksonomies out there?

Continue Reading: Is there an Example of a Usable Folksonomy?

Kevin Gamble (via Dave Weinberger):

“Is there any living, breathing example of a taxonomic approach working (scaling) to keep-up with the hyper-efficiency we see in peer-production systems? I’m being quite serious here. Can you point me to a working model?.”

Why is this an important question?

Continue Reading: Is there an Example of a Scalable Taxonomy?

In the early stages of starting a social web app, startups often wonder what group of people would make for good early adopters. What group should we focus our development and marketing efforts on?

Continue Reading: Starting a Social App? Find a niche and work outward