TAG: Google

Does SPAM force us to switch messaging technologies?

There’s an interesting discussion going on over at Danah Boyd’s site about social network fatigue, or why people switch messaging technologies (in particular social networks) over time.
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 [...]

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Why Scale Matters in Tagging Systems

Why and how scale in social tagging systems can leverage the Wisdom of Crowds (much like Google does with links) to make the incorrect tags less influential than certain Aristotelians would have us believe.
Ok, so I got into hot water for my Thoughts on the Impending Death of Information Architecture post…
But I’m completely fascinated by [...]

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Thoughts on the Impending Death of Information Architecture

Editor’s Note: (I have written a follow-up to this piece: More Thoughts on the Impending Death of Information Architecture. Since I wrote this piece, I’ve had many conversations with information architects and designers alike, and in the new piece I’ve tried to really outline the problem: IA at its most basic is the wrong frame [...]

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How to Get Over People Breaking Your Design

I read an interesting quote from this short bio of Douglas Merrill, VP of Engineering at Google:
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 [...]

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On The Convergence of Email and Chat (Google and Apple [and Yahoo] Get It)

Email, chat, and other messaging tools are converging…and most people don’t seem to mind.
So it seems that Danah Boyd got into the same trouble I got into when I said that social networks were killing email.
She wrote a whole post explaining why she claims email is dead:
“Do young people have email accounts? [...]

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A Fundamental Truth of the Web

Tim Berners-Lee:
“People have, since it started, complained about the fact that there is junk on the web. And as a universal medium, of course, it is important that the web itself doesn’t try to decide what is publishable. The way quality works on the web is through links.
It works because reputable writers make links to [...]

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Social problems need social design

A common question I get, when people find out what I do, is “How do I get on the first page of results on Google?”. This is the goal of lots of people, from relatives with web sites to small-business owners to huge organizations to bloggers. They want to be in that first window of [...]

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YouTube and the Importance of Top-of-Mind

Top-of-mind was just sold for $1.65 Billion dollars. That’s the amount Google paid for the social video site YouTube, which owns the top-of-mind space for the word “video” in the minds of the populace.

When I think of the word “video”, I immediately think of Youtube. When people want to upload “video”, they immediately think of YouTube. When people talk about where they saw the latest episode of the Daily Show, they talk about YouTube. When advertisers think of “video”, it’s all YouTube.

YouTube is what people think about when they think of the word “video”…

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Writing as IT

Ok, so this is something completely different. Instead of the usual joshness, I’ve invited my friend Bill (and my former professor at RPI) to guest post because he’s writing a really cool book and wants to get feedback on some early parts of it. Before I show you the content, however, let me set the stage a bit…

Last week, in part 4 of my discussion with Luke Wroblewski, the topic of writing and design came up. I compared writing to design, because I think there are striking similarities between the two: they each involve the selection and organization of content for effective communication of ideas. I was discussing this later with Bill, and he shared with me an even more extreme idea. Now, if there’s one thing that I know about Bill, it’s that there’s a lot more to his writing than can be gotten in an initial skimming. He’ll send me something, I’ll read it, and then weeks later I’ll realize how it got into my psyche…I’ve assimilated the thoughts almost without knowing it. So, with that, here’s a brief overview of the book he’s working on. And by the way, solid, enlightening feedback is mandatory… :)

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Google and Yahoo Design Throwdown

Does anybody feel a tension between the Google and Yahoo design teams? No? Well, you should, at least according to this New York Times piece by Saul Hansell: In the Race With Google, It’s Consistency vs. ‘Wow’.

Hansell describes the situation like this: Yahoo is consistent, turning out useful and solid designs like Yahoo Maps and Mail while Google goes for the WOW factor, turning out semi-finished designs in an attempt to impress people enough to lure them to their platform only to buff on a shine later on.

On the whole, this characterization seems reasonable. Yahoo does seem to put more work up front into their designs, while Google seems to experiment more. I, personally, find the experiments fascinating. Hansell characterizes the situation as a defining point in the “battle” to come…

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