1. Andy Hertzfeld is lead Designer. This surprised a lot of people. Andy Hertzfeld is one of the original Apple Macintosh team members and is the lead designer of Google+, focusing on the circles feature. This tidbit was big news last week, with many publications seeming to give Andy sole credit for the UI, so Andy wrote about his involvment and shared the credit with the other team members involved. Class act by Andy.

2. Increasing rivalry with Facebook. Dhanji Prasanna, an ex-Google+ engineer, wrote a post this weekend sharing some details of his time with the Google+ team, and there are two interesting bits. First, he describes how the circles project got started in part as the result of the research that Paul Adams had been doing:

“A few years ago, before the CEO cared a whit about social networking or identity, a Google User Experience researcher named Paul Adams created a slide deck called the Real Life Social Network. In a very long and well-illustrated talk, he makes the point that there is an impedence mismatch between what you share on facebook and your interactions in real life. So when you share a photo of yourself doing something crazy at a party, you don’t intend for your aunt and uncle, workmates or casual acquaintances to see it. But facebook does not do a good job of making this separation.”

Second, Dhanji describes the Google+ team’s response to the new Facebook Groups feature, which was built in part as a response to Adams’ research.

“Then it happened–facebook finally released the product they’d been working on so secretly, their answer to Paul’s thesis. The team lead at facebook even publicly tweeted a snarky jab at Google. Their product was called Facebook Groups.

I was dumbstruck. Was I reading this correctly? I quickly logged on and played with it, to see for myself. My former colleagues had started a Google Wave alumni group, and I even looked in there to see if I had misunderstood. But no–it seemed that facebook had completely missed the point.

And…it should be noted that Paul Adams left Google in December and now works at Facebook.

3. It puts Google on the design map. I’ve never heard as many designers saying such nice things about Google as they have in the past two weeks. In releasing a relatively polished, solid UI for Google+, they have started to turn their reputation around. This not only makes for better software, but it should help with recruiting as well. (this should not be discounted…Google is in a recruiting war with Facebook and Twitter…which is great! for designers)

4. Part of a bigger redesign. Google+ is taking on some new design styles that are part of a bigger redesign effort from Google. In the past few weeks they’ve redesigned Search, Gmail, Calendar…basically all of their properties. And, for the most part, these efforts have all been positive and made their software feel more professional, clean, and consistent. I know a couple folks who like the old style, but the vast majority of folks I’ve talked to like the new style.

5. Strong win for UX Research – Finally I think that Google+, even if it doesn’t grow to the size of Facebook, is a big win for UX research. The work that Paul and other folks at Google did over the past couple years led to a really innovative design. It will be interesting to see if the discrete sharing model works or if it’s too much management for folks. (I’ve started to use it to share with small groups…seems promising)

So there are a few reasons why I think Google+ is interesting from a design standpoint. I’m still amazed at the rise of social software…it wasn’t long ago that social was completely dismissed by nearly everyone. But, humans are social animals…as they say.

Why is this so? Why is it that Google monetizes so well on Search while having a hard time on social properties? Given an equal amount of views on Google vs. MySpace, shouldn’t they be able to get about the same number of click-throughs and thus ad revenue?

The difference, of course, is that when people go to Google, they’re actively looking for something. That something isn’t on Google. They are performing a search activity. Thus their task will be to click on a link that seems to promise what it is they’re looking for. It may be the organic results, or it may be an ad that seems close to what they want.

When people are on MySpace, the activity they’re doing isn’t search. It’s something akin to “hanging out” or “networking”. Their task is almost the opposite of search. They are already on the site they want to be on. They don’t need to click on links to take them where they want to go.

In other words, the context is entirely different. When you’re in search mode, you are playing by different rules.

Social ads don’t work as well because people are being social, not searching for something.

Advertisements live along a spectrum that goes from “irrelevant and distracting” to “relevant and interesting”. When ads are well-placed, they actually serve to help the user find what they’re looking for, or they’re interesting enough to grab the person’s attention away from whatever else they were doing. It would seem that this is what social ads have to do…they have to be interesting enough to get you away from socializing. Or, perhaps they are simply for brand-building purposes…you see the brand and it has a subconscious effect…you don’t change what you were doing but the brand is somehow strengthened in your mind from the ad impression.

Here’s a question: What if the activity you’re doing actually does determine your willingness to click on ads? This is what is being suggested by the early returns on ads in social networks. If this is so, then we can start by making a list of activities in which it would make sense that people are most accepting of ads.

• Searching
• Shopping
• Traveling

These activities all share something in common. People are on the move, and are actively looking for products and services to help them along their way.

There is a reason why Google wants super short time-per-visit and Facebook wants super long time-per-visit. It’s because the services support two completely different activities. Google wants a tremendous number of incredibly short visits. They want you to find good results immediately and leave the site. Facebook wants you to stay forever.

A fundamental problem with monetizing social sites is that the very reason why they have long time-on-site that makes them less effective places for advertising. They have provided a comfortable third place…people are already where they want to be!

Social network audiences are less like searchers and more like homebodies. The ads that will work best aren’t those where people have to leave the site, but those which allow you to stay and keep hanging out. But trivial things like games and contests can only be novel for so long…

In addition, since we are dealing with social capital as much as economic capital, the advertisements don’t make as much sense. Imagine if every time you talked with your friends they were trying to sell you something. They wouldn’t last long as your friend.

Facebook, in particular, is pushing the envelope here, as well they should, and hopefully learning a lot along the way. I hope, also, that we can learn from what they’re doing. My big takeaway so far is a renewed focus on the activity at hand. What activities people are engaging in says as much about their behavior as their innate constitution.

This might also suggest why Yahoo and Microsoft have a harder time monetizing their ads on their various properties. They’re trying to monetize ads on Mail, Groups, and other places where people are doing non-search activities. That’s why Google continues to rule the roost, because they have the most searchers. People, when they want to search for something, go to Google. Google = Search.

No matter how well Microsoft thinks it can monetize Yahoo’s non-search properties, it won’t be able to do as well as if it had more searchers coming to its site. However, Yahoo does have some interesting travel properties, so those should provide better results. I’m sure that these companies know down to the nano-percentages which types of properties work and which don’t. I would bet that it all depends on the context of use within those properties.

In terms of design, which is our focus, what does this mean? Well, it means that we need to investigate what contexts people are in as they use our web applications. Are they looking for something, or would they use our service as part of the activity of looking for something? Are they primed for ads? If not, then we’re better off providing value in some other way, like increasing productivity, etc.

This simple list also suggests why Google is investing a ton of energy into mobile, because when people are mobile we’re in unfamiliar places with the same old needs. We’re searching not only for our destination, but services that will help us along the way. So that’s why every time you turn around there’s some new quiet feature in Google Maps, because maps and mobile are the future of advertising.

“I do have great trepidation as this is exactly the tool social engineering hackers have been hoping for and working toward.

Most hacks of organizations (most are populated with 98% of people not like us that are more open to social engineering hacks) that have been hacked (been through more than a few of these meetings after the fact) are done through some clever individual using social engineering to convince somebody to trust the hacker. The identification of connections (usually best approached with weak ties) is a great starting point (this is the major reason why most organizations no longer have their employee list or full-contact list posted on their websites).

The Google SocialGraph API is exposing everybody who has not thought through their privacy or exposing of their connections.

This is an excellent point that needs to be considered.

An example of what Thomas describes might be that someone contacts you and pretends to know all the same people you know, and thereby gains your confidence and uses it for evil purposes. (Hugh Macleod calls these shared social objects social markers)

I think this is the same issue that Tim O’Reilly was getting at when he recently said:

“The counter-argument is that all this data is available anyway, and that by making it more visible, we raise people’s awareness and ultimately their behavior. I’m in (this) camp. It’s a lot like the evolutionary value of pain. Search (searching the social graph) creates feedback loops that allow us to learn from and modify our behavior. A false sense of security helps bad actors more than tools that make information more visible.

So Tim is saying that while we’ll probably have issues going forward (some will get burnt), in dealing with them we’ll learn how to expose our own social relationships on the web, which is a skill we’ll need from now on. Forever.

I tend to agree. But obviously this is a complex issue. Whether or not exposing relationship information comes to be an accepted practice, we’ll likely see new norms of behavior spring up.

Not everyone is happy with the Social Graph API. danah boyd has a dissenting opinion. She says:

“Being socially exposed is AOK when you hold a lot of privilege, when people cannot hold meaningful power over you, or when you can route around such efforts. Such is the life of most of the tech geeks living in Silicon Valley. But I spend all of my time with teenagers, one of the most vulnerable populations because of their lack of agency (let alone rights). Teens are notorious for self-exposure, but they want to do so in a controlled fashion. Self-exposure is critical for the coming of age process – it’s how we get a sense of who we are, how others perceive us, and how we fit into the world. We exposure during that time period in order to understand where the edges are. But we don’t expose to be put at true risk. Forced exposure puts this population at a much greater risk…”

While I agree that what danah is talking about is tremendously important, I don’t know why she says that this is “forcing” people to expose their personal relationship information. From my understanding, the Social Graph API is simply aggregating data and providing a means to query it. Now, that certainly makes it easier to find, and that’s an issue (technology is NOT neutral) But isn’t the bulk of responsibility, on those services where code is automatically generated, on the publisher’s themselves? And isn’t it on the individual who publishes their own code?

I have been assuming that publishing personal information would be done by choice. That is, an individual either makes a relationship public or not. If you choose to make it public, you can choose to mark up your information as XFN (or other supported formats) or not. If you do choose to mark it up, then you reap the benefits of the API and services that are built upon it. If you don’t mark it up, then the relationship is public but you keep some “security by obscurity” and your content is seen only in context.

However, there is still the issue that one side of the relationship could publish when the other wants to keep it private. This, in the current Google environment, is treated as a “possible relationship”. It makes a difference if only one side of the relationship is published. This situation may be what danah is referring to, and it does raise some concerns.

But simply publishing this API doesn’t mean that it forces publishers to use the formats without offering some level of control to their users, in fact publishers should give lots of controls around this. Now, if Six Apart and WordPress.com were to tomorrow say “We’re publishing your relationship data in these formats and you can’t opt out”, then that would be a serious problem. I hope that’s not the case, and from what we’ve seen with Facebook and their privacy issues, one would hope that other companies wouldn’t be so cavalier with people’s relationship data.

But I’m reminded again by the age-old saying: “the best way to prevent secrets from getting out is to not have any in the first place”. As technology makes it easier to share information, it becomes harder and harder to keep any of that information secret.

Do you ever feel like your personal information is spread across the web in a whole bunch of separate places? An account here, a profile there? A friends list here and a friends list there? All your information, but in all different places all incomplete at the same time?

The Social Graph API helps solve this “silos of information” problem by allowing people to write software that understands who your friends are. It does this by reading your web site or blog and making connections between the social profiles you have across the web.

For example, imagine you have a blog, which is your home on the web. You also have an Amazon profile, a Twitter profile, and a Facebook profile. So you have four profiles spread across the web, seemingly unconnected. Amazon has no idea who your friends on Facebook or Twitter are, and vice-versa, and this is a good thing from a privacy standpoint. These sites shouldn’t be able to find out everything about you with you giving them permission.

But what if you wanted these sites to know a bit about each other? What if you want to combine your Amazon book history with your friends lists at Facebook so that you can see what your friends are reading and let Amazon give you recommendations based on your similarity with them? Or, perhaps you just joined Twitter and want to know which of your Facebook friends are already there so you don’t have to go hunting for them? (see video) Here we see real-world examples of how cross-pollinating your personal information between these sites can not only be efficient, but desirable. (Not everyone will want to do this, however)

This type of scenario is what the Google Social Graph API is going to help solve. It does this by reading information on your blog that describes your other online profiles. So you might declare that you have a Twitter profile at http://twitter.com/bokardo or you have a Facebook profile at http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=500576058. Now, given your permission, Amazon can go out and find your Twitter friends and perhaps make book recommendations to you. Or, when you join a new social network, you can simply add your friends from existing networks with the click of a button.

So that’s the big reason why I’m excited by the Social Graph API: it helps to solve a real tough problem brought on by the proliferation of social networks. But there are several more reasons, too:

No Dependence on Google (or anyone else)

While Google is providing the API, nobody is dependent on them for creating or storing our relationships. This is done by the individual (as well as the services we sign up for). This means that Google isn’t in control of our relationship content. This is very much like how Search works. We own the content that we write on our web site. Google simply indexes it and provides tools to find, filter, and sort it. Google is an aggregator, not a creator. Google will be in competition to have the best aggregator of the graph.

The best way to explain this might be to point out that others can do exactly what Google is doing here. Since the relationship information is embedded within web sites anybody can index this information. So competitors can come along and try to provide a better API or better tools than Google.

Not a Walled Garden like Facebook

As Jeff Jarvis says: “The internet is the social network“. Walled gardens are not. Facebook is a great place to socialize. But they don’t own the relationships that happen there. Unlike Facebook, Google isn’t trying to own our social graph. This is incredibly important for the openness of the web. (btw: Jeff doesn’t think XFN and FOAF will gain traction…but I think they will because they are easy to implement and because solving this problem is too important. RSS and trackbacks are two technologies that succeeded in the same way)

This is in contrast to how Facebook runs things, which is by their permission. They want to own the relationship data. That’s why this API by Google is, to me, still a far better alternative. They are simply providing the best tool and keeping competition open.

A good indicator of this is to take a look at the first words on the Social Graph API: “Build critical mass on your website”. Would these words ever show up on anything by FB? NO. Their words would be “Build critical mass on our website”.

Based on Open Standards

The social relationships that the API exposes are encoded in regular old HTML using the XFN and FOAF formats. These are open standards that anybody can use. These are very easy to write and understand. Web developers will be able to learn what they need to in about 5 minutes in order to write these formats. Go HTML!

It will take a bit longer for blog publishers to write plugins that publish these formats for us, so that non-developers can publish their relationships as well. But with the amazing number of developers already creating plugins and other extensions, this won’t be a problem.

An Ecosystem

The Social Graph API is an ecosystem that anybody can play in. Since the relationship data is available to anybody, the spoils will go to the best tools that take advantage of them. Thus we have an ecosystem of open competition that allows anybody to play. Anybody with some spare time on their hands can jump in and create some cool program that helps people stay in better touch with their friends or somehow leverages those relationships. This move by Google cements their belief in the web as platform and reinforces their corporate mission to “help organize the world’s information”.

APIs are Great

This move by Google underscores the importance of APIs. The best thing about APIs is that we simply don’t know (and can’t imagine) how useful they can be. Developers will undoubtedly dream up a myriad of ways to use the API, some of which will become killer applications. The power of APIs is not what we can see plainly, but what we can’t see quite yet.

The User is in Charge

This is the biggest part of why I’m excited. My personal relationship information isn’t behind some walled garden. I’m in control of my own social graph! If I want people to know I have a Twitter account, then I can. If I don’t want them to be sure then I won’t make that relationship explicit on my blog.

The Domain as Identity is Realized

I don’t write about it often, but you may remember some posts about domain as identity I’ve written in the past. The Google Social Graph API is now getting us there by recognizing when we define our own relationships in our own domain. As more and more services look to our domain for verification, that only puts us more in charge of our online identity. Combine this with OpenID, and the idea of domain as identity really takes shape.

In the same way that we are in control of our own bodies, we need to be in control of our own domains. This is how we’re going to get privacy, if we want it. If you feel that you’re not in control of your domain, then you need to take your business elsewhere. This is why I dislike services that require you to have a subdomain within some other domain…those services that let you use your own domain are far preferable because you can at any point move your domain elsewhere. Just like you move your residence IRL.

What do I need to do?

So where does this leave us? Well, it leaves us with two very obvious next steps.

1. Get your own domain! – if you don’t have your own domain…go get one! (and not a subdomain)
2. Mark up your code – use the XFN and FOAF formats to markup your site, or use a service that does this for you. I seriously need to do this myself. (I have a FOAF file, that’s about it)

It won’t be long before developers take advantage of the Social Graph API to really leverage these relationships. There is already software taking advantage of the API. Google has provided some tools that allow you to discover your contacts. Play around with this and you can see the power of this API. We might actually have some coherence to personal information on the web after all.

Going forward

The truth is that Facebook, Amazon, or even Twitter never had a good glimpse of my true social network anyway. Therefore, they had an incomplete social graph. I never gave Facebook my email list, they don’t know anything about my blog, and I’m going to keep it that way. While Facebook and others can create a fun place to hang out, they don’t own the relationships I create there. I do.

Also, it should be pointed out that Google released the Social Graph API on the same day that Microsoft announced their intention to take over Yahoo. The irony of this can’t be more complete.

One is a sign of the past. One is a sign of the future.

Update: Discussion on privacy implications of the Social Graph API

The reason why I think they’re big deals is because they’re canaries in a coal mine of privacy, so to speak. What Facebook and Digg are doing (or trying to do) is exactly what everyone else will be trying to do (or having to deal with) in the near future. Why are Facebook and Digg able to do it now? Two reasons: they have flexible platforms which allow them to make changes relatively quickly and have big, savvy audiences who grew up with tech. Other social apps aren’t dealing with the same issues yet because they’re simply not innovating as fast as these two. But they will have to deal with them, and soon.

I was chatting with another designer the other day and we were surprised at how little we hear other designers talking about these issues. Why not?

It’s an interesting question.

One reason is that designers might view these as policy issues to be handled by executives. Certainly, part of them are policy issues: someone has to decide what to do when the barbarians are at the gates. Another reason is that they aren’t traditional design topics. They have little to do with color, typography, coding, standards, or any of the standard design issues we deal with day in and day out. A third reason might be that designers consider these issues no-brainers…although judging from the fact that it’s happened twice to Facebook I highly doubt that.

In watching these issues come and go, however, it strikes me that we might be looking at a new kind of design problem, a much harder type of problem than we designers are used to.

Consider:

1. In each case the design of the site either directly or indirectly influenced the user experience negatively. In the Facebook Beacon situation in particular, the design was especially conspicuous, as Facebook tweaked the language and the behavior of interface elements. (see evolution of the Beacon interface)

2. The solution to each problem was a change in the design of the site. In Digg’s case it was getting rid of the Top Digger’s screen and in Facebook’s it was (and still could be for Beacon) a control panel.

3. Some of the issues at hand are of such spontaneous nature that current practices in design evaluation (usability testing) could not have predicted them. Nor, probably, could have an insightful designer known when or how something was going to erupt. There is no test that lets you know when the mob will want rule.

So to me these are clearly design issues. But the people who are talking about them are decidedly not designers. Why is this so?

Here’s an idea for you:

Every web application is an interface through which people lead increasingly remarkable lifelets (lifelet = a slice of life). The users of Digg and Facebook rely on their respective application interfaces to let them know…well…everything! In the same way that you can’t shop at a physical Amazon store, you cannot do anything with Digg or Facebook without having access to the interface they provide. Thus the users are subject to whatever (and only whatever) the interface allows. If information is in the interface that day, it’s part of their world. If it’s not in the interface that day, it doesn’t exist. The interface therefore becomes the arbiter of their existence in that world.

As our online experiences grow richer through social software, the responsibility of that software to represent the world faithfully becomes paramount. And who is responsible for the integrity of the software interface?

Designers!

And…these entanglements continue to happen to all sorts of great designers. Just this past week the Google Reader team stepped into it by releasing a feature which took previously private items and made them public.

Things are just beginning to get interesting. The question is: who’s paying attention?

“Milton Glaser’s Dylan poster. Paul Rand’s IBM logo. Paula Scher’s Public Theater posters. Massimo Vignelli’s New York subway map. Kyle Cooper’s Seven opening titles. These are only a few landmark projects of our profession. Design solutions that, in their consistent use as exemplary cases of execution, concept and process, don’t even need to be shown anymore and that, for better or worse, (almost) everyone acknowledges as being seminal works that reflect the goals that graphic design strives for: A visual solution that not only enables, but also transcends, the message to become memorable in the eyes and minds of viewers. Whether these projects are indeed as amazing, relevant and enviable as we have built them up to be is cause for a separate discussion but it’s safe to say that, as far as designs recognized around the profession, there are a certain few that invariably make the list, usually without question. Myself, I could list projects in every category from logos, to annual reports, to magazine covers, to packaging, to typefaces, to opening titles that could be considered landmark projects… But when it comes to web sites, I can’t think of a single www that could be comparable – in gravitas, praise, or memorability – as any of the few projects I just mentioned. Could this be?”

Armin then goes and mentions the obvious answer: Google.

But this is not an acceptable answer for him, because…wait for it…the logo sucks.

To talk about Google in terms of its logo has long been a pastime for people who care about logos. For years I’ve heard the same argument from people who want nothing more than to get rid of the “Mickey Mouse” logo, as it is often described.

Armin’s point is that while Google seems to be better than Yahoo, it is still plagued with a bad logo. He’s not “moved or inspired” by the design. Therefore, he reasons, it is not canonical design. Canonical design, in his mind, is one that practitioners of the medium look to as exemplary.

But, frankly, I think Armin has missed his own point. He wants to know what web designers see as canonical, but he’s dismissing the obvious answer because it doesn’t fit into his canonical mold of graphic design. In other words, he’s looking at Google from a graphic design perspective, when web designers necessarily have to look at it from an interaction design perspective.

If Armin were to ask web designers and web development teams what the canonical web designs are, he would get very clear answers.

The first answer would indeed be Google. Google has, for nearly ten years, provided the best search engine on the Web. It is the standard by which all other search engines are compared. In the exact same way that Massimo Vignelli’s New York subway map has affected the design of subway maps since, Google has affected the design of search engines. I know design teams that have copied the search results pages of Google almost exactly simply because it was the design that Google used.

I also know a tremendous number of web designers who look to the spartan Google homepage as inspiration that great tools don’t need complex interfaces.

So if a “landmark” or “canonical” design means that it affects all design afterward, then Google certainly fits the bill.

Amazon also fits into that category. Amazon’s checkout process was the standard by which all checkout processes were measured for years. Their product reviews are the standard by which design teams the world over create product reviews. Their tabbed interface set the standard…their recommendation system…etc. Amazon pioneered so many things that seem commonplace now that you would be hard-pressed to find a more influential example.

Talk to web designers, product managers, and other web professionals, and these are the sites they’ll mention. Don’t talk just to people who build brochure sites…all they talk about is graphic design. Your answers will be the same as above. But talk to web designers and developers, and they’ll start talking about when Amazon added that extra row of tabs and quickly realized their mistake. It has become legend.

eBay has set the standard for auction sites. Social network sites are changing the world as we know it. Thousands and thousands of web designers are retooling their arsenal of features, layouts, and screen flows because these sites have completely changed the game.

So if its influence you want, you’ve got it. To borrow Armin’s own words “as far as designs recognized around the profession, there are a certain few that invariably make the list, usually without question”. Google. Amazon. Facebook. eBay. Yahoo. Craigslist. YouTube.

Do they have “gravitas, praise, or memorability”? Yes, they certainly do in the minds of web designers.

Will they be praised by print designers and put into large coffee table books? No, of course not.

You can’t appreciate a web site in the same way you appreciate a logo or a poster. When a logo works, it makes you think certain things. Makes you think about the company, their influence, their reach. It’s about branding. The IBM logo suggests a solidity, the rock that is Big Blue. At this point, after you’ve thought these things, you’re done. There is nothing else to do. Maybe you’ll consider their products in the future.

When a web site works, on the other hand, you’re using it to do something. You might be looking for your next favorite book on Amazon, or searching for a critical piece of information on Google. You’re using the web site…interacting with it, having an experience that, contrary to logos, involves you. You are inputting information, asking questions, getting answers.

So, as a web designer, there is no analog to “look at this logo and see how it stands for a company”. That’s relatively easy for graphic designers because we can quickly appreciate the way a logo graphically depicts some attribute of the company: “solid, blue, Big Blue, trustworthy”. Even if we don’t like the company or if its never done anything good for us, we can make this judgment of the design of the logo.

But in web design, we can’t pass such sophisticated judgment on a design without having an actual experience with the web application itself. Without actually experiencing the value first-hand, we can’t look at a web site and say “hey, that web site is well designed because it represents the company well”. This is the primary disconnect when talking about judging great web design. You’ve got to experience it in a real way to know if it is great.

So while Armin doesn’t want this to be about graphic vs. web design, it has to be at some level because web designers necessarily approach design from a different perspective than graphic designers.

Graphic designers can judge by looking. Web designers cannot. Web designers must judge by doing (or observing others doing). The problem is that too many people judge web designs without actually using them. Instead, they look. When you use the shortcut of looking, you tend to judge what you’re looking at: the visuals. But when you use something, your relationship to that thing necessarily changes. I wonder how often Armin uses Google.

That’s why web design is different. Peer production, in particular, is extremely different. When I buy a book on Amazon, when you buy a book, we change the way the site works for someone else buying books, which is in turn changed by the reviews we write afterward. Is this not amazing design?

Comparing the best web design with the best graphic design is a fool’s errand because they are celebrated differently by the very people in the profession. Graphic designers tend to memorialize their achievements, make heroes out of the top designers. Its easy to do, since individuals were the ones who actually created the designs. Milton Glaser. Paul Rand. Easy targets for appreciation.

Who do we credit for building Google? Larry and Sergei? How about Amazon? Jeff Bezos? People in the web development community know this is silly…thousands and thousands of people have worked on those sites, tweaking the user experience over many years. There is no single person we can point our accolades to. That’s part of the reason why I can’t make a list like Armin did…specific projects by specific people.

And this brings up another point. When someone is known for doing something good, their future work is colored by it. So all the logos that Paul Rand designed after the IBM logo were put up on a pedestal. Even if they weren’t so good. In web design, there are so many people working on something that it is hard to attribute a success to an individual, and so there are few legendary designers we can point to.

In addition, in web design there is no single design element like a logo we can point to in praise. You never see a product review standing by itself like you do the IBM logo. Web design needs the context of the site to make sense. A logo does not.

The lore of web design is different than the lore of printed design. Print design produces artifacts that do not change. Web design produces applications that do.

Is Google a technical achievement? Absolutely. Does that mean it isn’t a design achievement? No. It’s an astounding design achievement to make Google work the way it does. To enter a query and get a relevant response in under a second while searching the *entire* web is a design achievement that has few equals. Some may say this is simply “engineering” and dismiss it. But engineering takes planning, and that planning is design.

But, you ask, does Google look great? Eh. But at some point we have to ask: how would the experience be different if it did look better? Would it have any affect on the people who use it? (I use it in my browser, so I rarely see the logo in question anyway) Maybe designers would talk about it more, but geez they are already talking about it a lot as it is.

What would the world be like if everything were beautiful? Is that even possible?

My practical side says that whether or not Google moves the aesthetic sensibilities is irrelevant as long as people enjoy using it. That’s the important metric: use. Judging Google on aesthetics is like judging the Great Wall of China on its color of brick. It’s possible…but you’re missing the entire value proposition.

And, it goes without saying that lots of people find Google just fine aesthetically.

So, as a designer, do I worry that Google has a lousy logo? No…and I don’t think many web designers do. Most web designers know that the value of Google is in its utility, not its appearance. Can it still be canonical? Absolutely.

As usual, the crux of this discussion comes down to what we mean when we say “good design”. Do we mean the way something looks, as so many of the people who commented on Armin’s post seem to be saying? Or do we mean the way it affects us over time? Or perhaps how useful something is?

This is not an easy answer, and whatever answer you tend to subscribe to is going to change the way you look at Armin’s problem.

As for me, I tend to follow Steve Jobs on this one when he says “design is how something works”. Granted, this is a broad definition of design, but really, it seems to fit, doesn’t it? When design does what we want it to, we say “it works well”. Google works well. Amazon works well.

And to those folks who say “what Armin is saying is that design might as well look good, too” I say “we’ve already agreed that aesthetics are subjective…we will eventually run out of air for this conversation”.

Khoi Vinh of Subtraction, in reading Armin’s tea leaves, laments that web design is growing boring. After suggesting that too many designers are moving away from actually building things (which I agree with), he says that it is having an adverse affect:

“What that leaves is an enormous and unfulfilled gap in the middle which, while it’s not entirely unoccupied, is sparsely populated. And that’s our problem. We don’t have enough designers who do both (think and design); we have a polarized industry right now, and the result, as Armin tactfully alludes to in his article, is that Web design is really boring. Sorry, but it’s true.”

Web design is anything but boring. Look at what is happening with Facebook right now. They are exploring a new paradigm of social design. Can we build recommendation systems that inform us while not pissing us off? What part of social interaction can we model next? Are there social relationships we can’t model? Shouldn’t model?

If you think logos are interesting, what about the question: “What does it mean to be a fan of a for-profit company?”

These are the design challenges that lay before the web designer and to me are much more interesting than looking for a canonical web design. They are anything but boring.

I daresay these questions are more complicated than anything a graphic designer has ever been challenged with. The reason? They involve the person who is receiving the message and how that person responds. Two-way communication is harder than one-way. The biggest reason why it is harder is that accountability emerges as the conversation progresses…

Later, in the comments, Armin clarifies what he’s looking for:

“I find it a little too stubborn to keep saying that web sites are experiences and as such, not one, can be pinpointed as great or exemplifying of the medium.”

A great experience? How do you think that Google trumped all the other search engines and achieved a majority market share in the face of staggering competition? How do you think Amazon creates such passion in its users? Netflix? eBay? Craigslist?

And exemplifying the medium? Try to think of the Web and not think of Google!

The web is not suffering from a lack of canonical design. It’s just that canonical design on the web isn’t as glamorous as some want it to be.

Social Design Best Practices

The list of best practices are as follows:

1. Engage Quickly – (my interpretation: provide value within 30 seconds)
2. Mimic Look and Feel – (make your widget look like the page it is in)
3. Enable Self Expression – (let people personalize their widgets)
4. Make it Dynamic – (keep showing new stuff)
5. Expose Friend Activity – (show what friends are doing)
6. Browse the Graph – (let people explore their friends and friends of friends)
7. Drive Communication – (provide commenting features)
8. Build Communities – (expose different axes of similarity)
9. Solve Real World Tasks – (leverage people’s social connections to solve real problems)

This list is interesting for several reasons.

One is that we’re clearly seeing a set of practices emerge across all social software that centers around getting people started quickly, allowing for self-expression, engaged in real-life tasks, yet also allowing for flexible discovery and play. On both this site and others concerned with social design, these are the major themes that arise again and again.

Another is how quickly the social networks have changed the way we look at software in just a couple years. The third item on the list “Enable Self-Expression”, for example, would never have existed before the rise of MySpace. Facebook probably had a lot to do with “Expose Friend Activity”, which is a not-so-subtle reference to the news feed feature on that site.

Finally, I’m struck by how only two or three of the best practices are necessarily part of “social networking” software. They could be used in any kind of social software, be it productivity software for groups or even e-commerce sites that help people find the right product. That, to me, is the essence of social design. It isn’t relegated to social networking, even though the rise of social networking is what helped to clarify and refine the ideas. It’s about building software that takes advantage of social connections to provide enhanced value.

Also, note that these best practices are concerned with this particular technology. The Open Social initiative is a set of programming APIs that allows anybody to embed widgets (gadgets) within web pages (called containers). The embedded widgets can access outside services like MySpace, Orkut, and other social networks. As an simple example, I might embed a widget in my blog that shows my MySpace friends and whether or not they’re online at the moment.

Interesting bits aside, I think that the Google folks did a good job of summarizing some major issues in social design.

(We actually released it live last week, but I was away giving a talk on Social Design at UXWeek and couldn’t squeeze in the time to write it up until now)

Publishing2 was a great project for Bokardo Design because it dealt with a load of social features (being a blog and all). This was both a blessing and a curse, as getting the social features into the site was fun but also difficult because of dealing with so many WordPress plugins working at once. We tried hard to get lots of useful features without cluttering up the interface. We consciously fought feature creep and tried to keep the site as personally valuable as possible. One way we did this was to use a plugin that allows folks to follow the comment stream of a blog post whether or not they actually comment on it themselves. Scott’s audience tends to comment in-depth, and they often provide serious insight in the comments. (I hope to add this feature to Bokardo in the near future)

Another interesting part of the redesign was choosing a typeface for the masthead of the site. We couldn’t find a typeface that we were happy with at first, but then we started thinking about what sort of typeface would represent a site like Publishing 2.0. Was there a typeface that was thematically appropriate? I think there is, and I wrote about it on a special page called About the Design, kind of like an extended colophon where we discuss some of the things we did.

This design writeup was a new genre of information, used to explain a little bit about the thought processes behind the design and sharing that with others. I would love to see this sort of thing on other sites! Since Scott played such a big part in the design it seemed appropriate to talk about how we worked together to come up with the end result. This is the ideal situation for me: to work with a client who has a clear vision and a passion for what they do. It really makes the project that much more enjoyable.

Also, I must also mention Scott’s new venture, Publish2 (here’s the blog). I really can’t tell you how brilliant I think this idea is – a social bookmarking and research platform for guess who?…journalists! It took me a while to consider the implications of this…actually still mulling it over. What happens when the research and discussions of journalists are public? There is already speculation of these implications surrounding the new Google News feature…and that’s exactly what Scott is going to find out with Publish2. I’m really excited to see where it goes…and to get insight into things like what blogs and resources journalists find valuable.

So, there are lots of details to the Publishing2 design that I would love to share with you. If you have any questions/comments/etc, feel free to drop me a line.

Update: read Part II and Part III

In the last several years we’ve seen the rise and fall of many social web applications. While most of our attention gets paid to the hugely successful ones like YouTube and Facebook, we can also learn a lot from those that have failed. Here are some of the common pitfalls that lead to failure when building social web applications.

1) Underestimating The Cold Start Problem

If you build and release your social web site and nobody uses it, you have the cold start problem. This problem affects most social sites, and directly results from designing for the network. The effect of the network is that nodes on the network (web sites) have attention momentum. We pay attention to certain nodes (sites) already, and so if you’re trying to add one to the network then you have to build your own attention momentum over time. This is not easy.

Too often, though, this hurdle is underestimated. The first step is to admit there’s a problem. Say “This is not working. Our early users are not using the site how we want them to”. You would be surprised at how often this doesn’t happen. Instead, what often happens is that more money is pushed into features or marketing, which is precisely the wrong move.

Strong social sites build value one user at a time. If one user finds value, then they’re much more likely to tell others or invite their friends. Strong sites don’t succeed by attracting “markets”, satisfying entire groups of people with a certain feature set. Instead, they succeed on a smaller level, really focusing on individuals and their immediate social network. Then they can branch outward. One strategy in particular is to design for your friends, get the system working well for them, and then release it to a broader audience.

2) Focusing on Too Many Things

I got this email in my inbox the other day from a well-meaning entrepreneur who was building a new social web site:

“(our site) aims to combine the best elements of Digg, Del.icio.us and StumbleUpon, as a mechanism of social discovery and personal expression – but with the unique element of real-time.”

I get so many of these it’s not funny. This is a clear case of focusing on too many things. If you can’t describe what your site does with a single, clear idea then you’re trying to do too much. In addition, a comparison to other sites in this way is a bad idea, because they’ve already beat you. They already have a strong brand while you have a weak one.

The ease of adding social features makes overload likely. Development frameworks make adding friends, tags, profiles, blogs, or a host of other social features much easier than it was even a couple years ago. This is the opposite to a barrier to entry, where the hard part is building something at all. Instead, the ease of adding social features is a barrier to focus. If you have every feature under the sun you’re probably not focused as well as you could be.

So focus on one thing that isn’t being addressed. It can’t be something like “the unique element of real-time”. It has to be something inherently valuable, like a common frustrating activity. Nail that one thing to the ground, and show people how you do that one thing better than anybody else.

Think of the most successful social sites out there. They usually focus on a single thing. YouTube (video), Netflix (movies), eBay (auctions), MySpace (friends), Flickr (photos), Del.icio.us (bookmarks) and most of the social features on those sites are aimed at making that one activity better. These are just the giants. There are many more niches that are successfully designed for that are even more focused. Threadless focuses on t-shirts. Last.fm on music. etc…

3) Lack of Sustained Execution

What makes Google so terrifying to their competitors is that they never stop getting better. They’re executing each and every day to make their software the best it can be. For example, in September of last year they did the unthinkable: they completely killed off the interface paradigm of a solid, growing product: their Google Reader software. But they replaced it with an even better interface that was universally acclaimed.

It’s too easy to fall into the desktop software mindset of build, release, and wait for the next cycle. But with social software, you don’t have the opportunity to stop improving. Your community is always growing and changing and so your management has to as well. There will always be things to do, screens to improve, questions to answer, and wording to tweak, support docs to update.

This can seem daunting, but I think it’s mostly about mindset. If you see it as a sustained problem, then it will be one. If you see it as an opportunity for continual improvement, your outlook will be more positive.

4) Pointing the Finger when Missteps Happen

When you mess up on a social web app, as you undoubtedly will, you have to come completely clean or your users will smell your fear and hate you for it. Social sites are not typical software…they ebb and flow depending on the community and how it evolves over time. You, as the manager of a community, must act accordingly.

Consider the recent Digg dustup in which the Digg community pushed back on the site after they tried to remove a certain DVD-cracking code from user-submitted entries. At first, Digg tried to explain the situation away by saying they were legally obligated to as the result of a cease-and-desist letter. The basic message was “our hands are tied”.

But then the Digg community overwhelmed the site and got the DVD crack code up anyway. The failure of Digg management to stand up for their users initially resulted in the user’s aggregate behavior. Digg didn’t lose out, however, as this community passion provided an opportunity for them to ride the wave, so to speak, reversing their course and standing up to the cease-and-desist. Their apology letter and reversal suggests they quickly realized that pointing the finger wasn’t the right course. Only by accepting responsibility for their user base could Digg keep their respect.

Here’s a template for how to say you’re sorry.

Continue to Part II

“Google’s proposed acquisition of DoubleClick will give one company access to more information about the Internet activities of consumers than any other company in the world,” said the complaint lodged with the Federal Trade Commission. “Moreover, Google will operate with virtually no legal obligation to ensure the privacy, security, and accuracy of the personal data that it collects.”

This is a fear that many people hold. What responsibility does Google have?

Tim O’Reilly provides the counter-argument, suggesting that the activists are ignoring much bigger threats:

“While there is some ground for concern, people seem to be ignoring far greater risks to our privacy that are in the hands of people far less scrupulous than Google. Our credit card company knows everything we buy — and sells that information to marketers; our phone company knows everyone we call — and sells that information to marketers; our supermarket knows what we buy and how often — and sells that information to marketers.”

But I think that Tim is still looking at small potatoes. This isn’t just about selling your data to some dirty 3rd party, which happens all the time. This is about manipulation of behavior over the long term…could Google possibly do something like that? Is there such thing as an information monopolist? Is it possible for a company to know so much about so many things that it can sway the way the world works?

O’Reilly goes on to suggest that Google is a benevolent dictator:

“Meanwhile, here’s Google, which is using the information it collects to build better services that we eagerly consume because they are useful to us, and yet we’re complaining about the risks of how much data they collect! At least Google’s harnessing that data for our benefit, while most of the other big data collectors are simply using it for their own.”

This is the crux of a major, major issue that isn’t going to go away soon, probably ever. As Google and other ginormous data-center companies figure out how to provide better and better services, they’ll also create better aggregation tools and information harvesters. I checked out my Search History on Google the other day and was astounded at how many searches I do. I don’t remember 90% of them…and I’m not sure I’m comfortable with someone or something that does.

Up until now Google has been very protective of its users. Matt Cutts argues well for them. But, as time goes on and Google matures into a corporation that thinks it deserves takes its great success for granted (as at least some people within the organization will), is there a point when it knows too much for our own good?

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? How are MySpace, Fotolog, and Craigslist so popular in an age that values stunning visual design and amazing technology above all else? Conversely, how is it that Flickr, full of beauty and Ajax, is being overtaken by a site as boring as Fotolog?

Aye, there’s the rub…a rub that defines the current state of web design.

First off, a little throat-clearing. We’re dealing with Alexa stats here, so there are no guarantees that anything is accurate. Just because Alexa shows that Fotolog gets more traffic than Flickr doesn’t mean that it is…it’s kind of like listening to a reporter who usually covers political news tell us what’s going on in Silicon Valley. Suspect, to say the least. But for the sake of argument let’s assume that the trend is right, and that Fotolog is overtaking Flickr in terms of traffic.

Page views and Ajax…a match made in Hell

Well, one reason why Fotolog might appear so successful is the very technology that Jason mentions: Ajax. Page views are a metric that Alexa uses in its traffic calculation. But when you switch to an Ajax interface, your page views plummet. For example, when people want to add a tag, change a headline, or edit a photo set on Flickr very few page views occur. You’re simply interacting with a single screen that doesn’t refresh, but sends and receives requests in the background. This undoubtedly has a huge effect on the page views on Flickr.

Fotolog, on the other hand, gets a page view anytime a person wants to change anything. Therefore, less efficient bandwidth consumption and server usage actually gets Fotolog much higher traffic numbers…which is pretty damn ironic.

What’s more ironic is that this is an increasing problem on huge advertising sites and few people want to talk about it. What’s at stake? Billions of dollars that are wrapped up in page-view models where money changes hands depending on what “traffic” a site receives. And for years that traffic depends on page requests to a server, which of course happens even when people are doing simple things like changing a photos headline. So while companies realize that using an Ajax interface, when done well, can literally save millions in bandwidth costs and actually provide a faster, easier-to-use interface, they also realize that their advertisers only know one metric: the page view.

I’ve talked to some folks at Yahoo about this, and they say that their discussions on this topic get pretty tense. This is a huge problem for them because so much of their revenue is advertising based but they know that the future of interface design is elegant Ajax. This problem has been known for some time, but we’re still at the start of the huge effort in migrating away from the page view as a valuable metric for anything.

Technology doesn’t a great value make

Jason makes a strong case that technology is over-valued. I think he’s exactly right when he says:

“Maybe tags, APIs, and Ajax aren’t the silver bullets we’ve been led to believe they are. Fotolog, MySpace, Orkut, YouTube, and Digg have all proven that you can build compelling experiences and huge audiences without heavy reliance on so-called Web 2.0 technologies. Whatever Web 2.0 is, I don’t think its success hinges on Ajax, tags, or APIs.”

This is the exact problem I’ve been talking about lately: in some cases visual design and/or technology are trumped by other aspects of design.

In my Social Design talk, which I most recently gave at the Web App Summit, I ask this question: What are the most successful web sites in the world? The answers are the ones you would expect: Google, YouTube, MySpace, Yahoo, Craigslist, Amazon, eBay.

But then I ask the question slightly differently: What are the most well-designed web sites in the world? Outside of a minimalist Google, there is no overlap for most folks. None of the others on the list are “well-designed” in their minds…they’re simply successful, poorly-designed sites. They attribute the success of these sites to other factors: being first in the market, having economies of scale, etc.

From a visual design standpoint they might be right: these sites aren’t going to win any visual design contests. But the value of these sites goes so far beyond the visual that to judge them by the way they look is to completely miss the boat. In our testing at UIE, for example, we’ve never had anyone refuse to shop at Amazon because it doesn’t look great…in fact people are most passionate about Amazon because of the value they get from reviews…and the rest of the socially-focused features there. People love Amazon, and it has nothing to do with its visual design!

And people are passionate about the other very successful sites, too. To Jason’s point, the major value of all of the successful sites doesn’t rest on what specific technology they use or whether they have tagging. Instead, the major value rests on social aspects of the design…take away the interaction of the communities on these sites and there is very little value left in them. Take away the reviews from Amazon and you’ll hear a great big sucking sound of folks rushing out to buy their wares on some other site…

Similarly to Amazon, Fotolog relies heavily on social interaction, in their case sharing photos with friends. This is the primary value of the site, not how they do it from a technological standpoint.

The usual red herring: judging a book by its cover

Ignoring visuals and technology (at least temporarily) is a big change for many designers and technologists. Why? Because technology and visuals often get the credit when things go well, but aren’t really talked about when things go contrary to our assumptions. That’s exactly Jason’s point: why is it that Fotolog uses inferior technology and visual design and still succeeds?

I think the answer is that the differentiator on the Web right now isn’t great visual design or technology, although those help out tremendously (don’t get me wrong!). An analogy might be in order here because so many people think I’m trying to denigrate visual design…I’m not! Here’s an analogy:

Every time George Bush makes his State of the Union Address he speaks very clearly, his words are well-chosen and his speechwriters are obviously top-of-the-class. They communicate very well, and for the most part every single person who listens or watches the address knows exactly what George Bush is trying to say. Speechwriters learning the craft would do well to emulate the skill and technique of Bush’s speechwriters. Even so, the address is a bunch of statements that most people disagree with: most people want the U.S. out of Iraq and observe that the efforts there have largely been a failure. Even Bush’s own party is now alienated. But the State of the Union Address itself is well-executed: it’s clear communication…Bush is just sending the wrong message.

(update: several folks are angry with me that I used a political analogy…I’m certainly open to suggestions for future analogies where the communication is clear and well-executed but fails to deliver the right message to the audience)

This is the same with visual design: you can execute beautifully but if the message you’re sending isn’t the one the audience wants to hear then the overall design will be a failure. I believe this is what Jason is talking about with his repeated references to “Web 2.0″. He doesn’t see the value in the majority of so-called Web 2.0 services…they might look great and have interesting technology but if they don’t actually improve our lives…then what good are they?

Visual design is about communicating a message well…getting the point across. The problem comes when the message being communicated isn’t the right one…and that’s exactly what we’re seeing so much of…so many sites have great visual design and great technology but just aren’t sending a valuable message…

Where are all these sites? They’re everywhere: they’re the ones you’re NOT using.

There are two primary aspects of design: communicating the right message. Why is this two aspects? Because one aspect is communicating a message well and the other is making sure it is the right message in the first place. Perhaps this second part is what is called design strategy these days. I don’t know, but I know that one needs the other in each and every design project.

Preventing valueless design

We need a new way of thinking to prevent valueless design. Valueless design is like a George Bush speech: well-executed but wrong. While it may be communicating beautifully on one level, the impact on society may be minimal or, even worse, negative. We need design that provides real value to humans.

The new model as I call it is social design: a focus on the social lives of users, the context of how people live, and the connections they have with their family, friends, and loved ones. It’s about the daily activities that people care about, that make their lives richer, more fulfilling, and that have very little to do with how a piece of software looks or works behind the scenes.

But that’s just how I see it. I’m sure that other ways to get people in the right design mindset. I believe the best designers not only execute technically well, but have the mindset to discover the right design. They’re open to new ideas, passionate about what they do, and focused on the lives of their users in order to prevent sending the wrong message.

One view is that SPAM eventually overrides every technology, forcing people to move to something else. A commenter, JD, suggested that SPAM killed Usenet, Email, and IM, and even domain names (not sure about that one: phishing?). There is certainly merit to this viewpoint…it does seem that as time goes on SPAM just grows and grows…maybe we get tired not only of social networks but also of the signal/noise ratio of quality content on the medium.

I proposed another view, that isn’t necessarily opposed to the first one but isn’t quite as black/white. I think that SPAM does cause fatigue…but actually isn’t powerful enough to get us to switch technologies. I think usability has a lot to do with actual switching. Simply put, we message in the easiest way possible.

In the current situation, social networks and text messaging on mobile phones are primary ways that teenagers message. They don’t use email or IM as much as they used to (of course they still use it). I think the rise in the use of social networks and text messaging stems from them not only being easier and faster, but more contextual. For example, when you sign somebody’s blog on MySpace (or wall in Facebook), the message shows up right where you spend a large part of your day. You don’t have to fire up an email application and “get mail” to check to see if something is there. It’s a crapshoot. In addition, there is no threading or linking that goes on in email. In social networking you can see so much more if you want to…by simply clicking on the avatar of the person who sent the message.

So, what comes after social networks? Well, I think it will be a migration to socially-enabled features within existing applications that we’re already using.

One excellent example of this is Google Calendar, which we’re using pretty happily at UIE. It’s simply a calendar application, just like we’ve had for years with Outlook and iCal, except it’s got great social features. You can easily share calendars with others, as well as “share and edit”, which means you collaborate with others in managing the calendar. I think that this will be the way that most of us get into social networking (if we weren’t already). Some kind of built-in social feature in an application type we already use.

(this just in: new reports [Techcrunch, Hitwise] just out that Google Calendar seems to be growing well)

This conversation has also reminded me of an obvious point that we have to remember about SPAM. Spammers follow the people. If a ton of people are using a certain messaging system, then that’s where the SPAM will be. Even though it seems like there is a steady stream of SPAM, there really isn’t. It’s a whole bunch (or probably only a few) of script kiddies making discrete decisions to actually send it. That’s why you don’t see as much SPAM during off-hours…spammers like to watch Lost, too.

But what actually gets us to change messaging technologies? My guess is context and usability more than SPAM. I say this because I’m using email and IM more than ever…despite the SPAM being sent my way. I don’t yet have a better or easier way to message. When that comes along, I’ll gladly switch.

I don’t know which side is right, but the question is an interesting one. If one side is right, then that potentially says lots about how we design messaging technologies.

Ok, so I got into hot water for my Thoughts on the Impending Death of Information Architecture post…

But I’m completely fascinated by this subject. In that piece I referenced a work by Elaine Petersen entitled Beneath the Metadata: Some Philosophical Problems with Folksonomy. Elaine eloquently argues that since tagging systems can contain incorrect information (non-Aristotelian, she calls it brilliantly), they will eventually fail to serve our needs. She says:

“Although folksonomy advocates are beginning to correct some linguistic and cultural variations when applying tags, inconsistencies within the folksonomic classification scheme will always persist. There are no right or wrong classification terms in a folksonomic world, and the system can break down when applied to databases of journal articles or dissertations.”

This argument, as I’ve mentioned before, is one about relativism. Is it OK to have systems which contain misinformation, even if it happens to be the way someone thinks and tags?

Let me put it more bluntly: Do people have the right to think how they want?

If we re-ask the question in this way, the answer is clear. (And no, I don’t think it’s ridiculous to equate this argument with allowing people to think what they want. At some level it *is* about that, in a weird science-fiction way)

So, of course we have the right to think what we want, at least most people think so. (insert analogous religious argument here about actions and beliefs)

Anyway, if you’ve read Bokardo for any period of time (go here to win prizes) you know that I believe our systems should model our behaviors and thoughts, not the other way around. We shouldn’t have to map what’s in our head to some other idea set every time we use software if we don’t have to.

If I want to tag the New York Yankees as “the best team money can buy”, and someone else thinks that’s just plain wrong, then tough for them. That’s how I want to tag it, that’s how I want to re-find it, and that’s how I think about the Bronx Bombers (or was it the Yankees?). In folksonomies the view of the system is *my* view…warts and all.

Moreover, other folks in Red Sox Nation might tag it similarly, thus propagating the potential falsity in the system for Yankees fans to find (except, of course, the Yankees are the best team money can buy). Note, though, that their version of the system will have their version of tags for the Yankees…we still have a problem, according to Elaine…there is information in the system that doesn’t agree with other information in the system.

Geez…sometimes I don’t even agree with myself.

Scale is the Great Equalizer

But the thing is, and this is where Elaine underestimates folksonomies, scale matters. Even if a few people tag things incorrectly, most people won’t. This doesn’t have to do with the fact that most people are Good, it’s just that if we ask enough people the same question or have them observe the same phenomenon, where their experiences overlap will tend to be the reality of the situation.

At this point, we could go many ways with this topic. One way would be to tie in James Surowiecki’s brilliant book The Wisdom of Crowds, which makes a lengthy dissertation on the subject of aggregating individual viewpoints. If, under certain conditions, we aggregate the individual decisions of many people, the result tends to be equal to or better than an expert’s view. Here’s the Wikipedia entry for the Wisdom of Crowds, which gives a quick but good overview, and is no doubt a great irony in and of itself…(the crowd writing about the Wisdom of…itself…in a relativistic system with no authoritative voice except the accumulated voice of all its members)

Another way we could go with this topic is where Dan Stewart went. Dan, commenting on Dave Weinberger’s lengthy reply to Elaine, points to another, relatively important document Bokardoans should all be familiar with by now (I’ve talked about it enough):

“Elaine makes the argument that if an item on the web is tagged with words that do not describe it, then the system breaks down. In The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine by Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page the authors state, “Also, it is interesting to note that metadata efforts have largely failed with web search engines, because any text on the page which is not directly represented to the user is abused to manipulate search engines. There are even numerous companies which specialize in manipulating search engines for profit.”

So Dan ties in the Google PageRank algorithm to the folksonomy argument. Cool! However, at this point you may be thinking that Dan is a proponent of tagging systems. Alas, no, he is not. He goes on to say:

“Metadata is data about data, and tagging a page on the internet is essentially adding metadata. For the same reason that search engines no longer rely on metadata, social bookmarking could be abused and eventually become worthless.”

I think Dan has this second bit all wrong because he fails to distinguish where the metadata comes from and who is using it. If it comes from the expert, it’s expert-supplied metadata. This is exactly the type of metadata that Brin and Page were talking about, and in particular the <meta> tags of HTML. Those are defined by the author of the page (the expert) in the head portion of the HTML document.

As the Brin/Page quote points out, meta tags weren’t shown to the user of the page. This meant that document authors weren’t writing them for their users and thus had little incentive to make them accurate. Instead, their primary use was to tell user agents (search engines) what the page is about.

Because there is no personal use, meta tags get abused. If it doesn’t make a difference to the author what the meta tags say, then they’ll manipulate them away from what best describes their page to what best gets search engines to return them high in the results. This is the inflection point: at this point they become, essentially, SPAM.

However, tags are not defined by authors. They’re supplied by users. They’re user-supplied metadata. As a result, they’re used by the very people who created them. And, it is in that person’s best interest to keep them useful. Even though they can be incorrect like SPAM, they are not like SPAM in that someone actually has incentive to keep them valuable for human use.

BTW: this all seems to follow The Del.icio.us Lesson.

Further, what is the best example of user-supplied metadata on the Web? Links, of course. Links are essentially references to other documents. Links are created by authors but differ from meta tags because people actually use the links, following them and learning from them. Whereas manipulated meta tags didn’t hurt the user experience, manipulated links seriously kills it. If you are putting up bad links on your pages, people respond negatively…and swiftly. They just won’t come back. It’s definitely in the author’s interest to keep links valuable to users.

…and what does Google use to model how we value content? Links!

And we know why we can aggregate links in this way…because we have a large enough set of them to weed out the inconsistencies even as they continue to exist. We’ve got scale, baby!

This isn’t to say that SPAM isn’t a huge problem…it is. I certainly don’t envy the SPAM harvesters at Google. But if we look at all the people making links…the vast majority are creating valuable, non-spammy ones.

So where Dan sees a divergence and a route away from tagging, I see a convergence and a route toward tagging. Not only are tags user-supplied, personal-use metadata (and that will be their primary reason for being), but they also scale really well on a social level because they’re like links…if we have enough of them the incorrect ones (created by spammers and non-spammers alike) actually get lost in the Crowd…

And what does that leave?

Wisdom, I hope.

Christina Wodtke (who wrote the book on Information Architecture) is angry about its impending death:

“I recalled a recent blogpost by Adam Greenfield and I found a clue. I think he, and Peterme, and Lou and Peter Morville… well, we’re all outgrowing our favorite pair of jeans: IA. And the waistband is cutting in badly, but it’s our favorite pair, so of course we’re crabby. We’re all going to stay crabby unless we finally take them out of our “skinny” drawer and give them to goodwill.”

Yes, indeed. IA as it has lived will soon die. Not because it wasn’t valuable, not because IA’s didn’t do great work, but because the Web is moving on.

The problem is that IA models information, not relationships. Many of the artifacts that IAs create: site maps, navigation systems, taxonomies, are information models built on the assumption that a single way to organize things can suit all users…one IA to rule them all, so to speak.

Clay Shirky, in his talk Ontologies are Overrated, equates this type of categorization with organizing the world in advance. He uses the dichotomy of browse vs. search as a wedge:

“Browse versus search is a radical increase in the trust we put in link infrastructure, and in the degree of power derived from that link structure. Browse says the people making the ontology, the people doing the categorization, have the responsibility to organize the world in advance. Given this requirement, the views of the catalogers necessarily override the user’s needs and the user’s view of the world. If you want something that hasn’t been categorized in the way you think about it, you’re out of luck.”

Many IA’s won’t stand for this, however. Their response would be something along these lines: “unchanging taxonomies aren’t what IA is about…it’s about organizing information around the user’s needs, and practices such as card sorting help to do that”.

In addition, writers in information architecture have reacted strongly against ideas such as folksonomies, which are navigation structures built out of one’s own tags. Peter Morville, in his book Ambient Findability, states:

“when it comes to findability, their (folksonomies) inability to handle equivalence, hierarchy, and other semantic relationships causes them to fail miserably at any significant scale.”

This is a valid reply, of course, except that it’s completely wrong. Equivalence is handled by similar tags and tag clusters, hierarchy is handled by nested tags, and it’s pretty clear that both Flickr and Del.icio.us (and many other sites using folksonomies) can scale.

Thomas Vander Wal, in a recent reply to Beneath the Metadata: Some Philosophical Problems with Folksonomy, an article critical of folksonomies (a term he coined), gets at the heart of the problem here:

“This assumption…that taxonomies are great and help people find things by providing the authoritative terms is wrong. Taxonomies are always less than perfect and most often far less than perfect for helping people find and refind information they need. But, we do need taxonomies to provide that foundation structure. We need solutions that can help the many people whose terms and vocabulary are left out of the taxonomy.”

This is, on some level, a platonic vs relative argument. Either you believe meaning is inherent in the natural structure of the universe, or you believe that meaning is relative, personal, and different for everyone.

The biggest cleavage along these lines, as Shirky alluded to, is Google Search (meaning is relative and can be modeled by links) vs. Yahoo Directory (meaning is inherent in the structure of information). We all know who won that battle, but did you know that the Yahoo Directory isn’t even on the Yahoo homepage anymore? Yahoo has all but demonstrated that the directory model, and not the folksonomy model, doesn’t scale.

In many ways, the success of Google’s Pagerank algorithm was the harbinger of all this. The simple idea that people’s actions model meaning better than a directory (even a flexible directory) is a critical step forward in thinking about the Web. The innovation we’re seeing with folksonomies, recommendation systems, social networking sites…all have their roots in the idea that modeling what people actually do on the Web is the best way to provide answers for them. And, perhaps more importantly, it is an admission that we simply can’t predict the future…we can’t design a perfect information architecture, and to attempt to implies that the world we’re modeling doesn’t change.

That said, I’m not claiming that information architecture is bad. In all probability an IA would assume that Search is part of IA, that flexible metadata is part of IA, and most of what I’m using as counter-examples are part of IA.

But the fact is that IA is a theory about the inherent structure of information…the architecture of information…and if we are moving away from that we should call it something else.

Relationship Architecture, perhaps?

In the end, Christina suggests that it is all about change, and that explains why she’s angry:

“Anger is almost always based on fear, and change fuels fear.”

There are no lasting technical solutions to social problems, and most interesting problems are social problems. “The particular tools and systems we give [people] yield certain kinds of problems,” he says. Merrill sees it as his job to help solve them.’

“There are no lasting technical solutions to social problems”. Now that’s an interesting attitude from a Google guy!

I like it, because it takes away the premise that anything we do technologically will be a continued success without our continued effort. It suggests that we’re in this for the long haul, that we’re all in this together. (cue John Lennon song)

It’s easy to say that spammers and malcontents will always arrive right after a new technology has surfaced and muddy the waters. And that may be true, but isn’t it OK? Isn’t the fact that there are people using the technology going to make it better? Going to teach us how best to evolve it over time?

Don’t Break My Design

This is the classic “don’t break my design” problem. Lots of folks out there are scared to death that someone will actually, say, use their web site and say critical things about it. I know, I’ve been there. I’ve spent long hours creating web sites only to be reticent to introduce it to the world, because I want it to be the pristine creation that it is in my mind.

This also carries over to blogging, and writing. I know *tons* of people who think the idea of starting a blog is a good one (they want to, really bad) except that they’re scared to death to do it. Just….do it. You’ll be a better writer as fast as you can say “I had Trix for breakfast this morning”.

But then, after going through this process a few times, you realize that they’re only making it better, even if it might be at the expense of your ego. They’re actually doing the work of many more people, just earlier and in your face. So let them say nasty things about it. You’ll make it better next time.

And pretty soon, you’ll be propositioning people for feedback. You’ll realize that you can’t replicate social issues surrounding your creation. You’ll want critique. You’ll want critics to be nasty to you, because you’re the person making this thing, and if it’s any good you’ll get the credit, even if it started out a mess. Nobody remembers the early mess.

When you flip the table, embrace their help, you’ll have a better product. Isn’t that the original point?