Netflix.com is one of my favorite sites, both for the valuable service they provide but also because they do really great web application work. From the Netflix Community Blog:

Question: “If we KNOW something is a feature you want, or a feature we want, why isn’t it on the site already — or why is it taking so long to release?”

Continue Reading: Why is the Netflix Site Good?

Every once in a while we get a glimpse of how amazing people view the world in such a way that we can’t help but see the world with new eyes ourselves…

“There is a disproportionate capability among people on this planet to solve problems. We certainly can’t expect most of the people who don’t have the resources to be the ones who supply the solutions. That makes you a very small minority. I heard different definitions of “minority,” but educated people who understand the laws of nature, the rules of engineering, or the laws of man and economics and finance and politics and democracy are an incredibly small minority on this planet, and they have a huge advantage in the leverage and the control they have over the world’s physical and political environment. You don’t have to be an historian to know most of the time that leverage is used to help the rich get richer. You are able to think about how your education is going to enrich you.

You also ought to remember that if you are going to solve all problems that we’re facing in this world, it’s unlikely that the people and ideas that got us to where we are, are either the people or ideas that are going to get us to a different place. It’s going to require new people with new ideas [applause]. And that would be you.”

…

Continue Reading: Dean Kamen on Design Responsibility

In case you missed this little nugget from Thomas Vander Wal, I thought I would point your attention to it now.

Folksonomy Provides 70 Percent More Terms Than Taxonomy

The result comes from the Steve Museum, an amazing project in which people apply tags to…art. The early results from their research suggest that the words people use differ quite a bit from what the terms a museum uses.

As Thomas suggests, lots of folks are going to use tags to supplement taxonomy…but I’m wondering if that’s not a fool’s errand. More specifically, I think a taxonomy might be too rigid a tool in many cases, where a flexible navigation system, fed by the terms exposed in a folksonomy, might be a more reasonable road. Call it a taxonomy if you want…but what I’m thinking of isn’t nearly as static as most taxonomies.

Continue Reading: Taxonomies and Tags

This is part III of a series on Common Pitfalls of Building Social Web Applications. Read Part I and Part II

8) Not Enabling Recommendations

Thoughtful recommendations are the best possible way to increase your user base. It is word-of-mouth in action. When someone takes time out of their day to say something really nice about your service, making an honest-to-goodness recommendation, you will definitely see positive results. The question is, are you making it easy for your users to recommend you?

In our world lots of people make recommendations, but many of them are paid to do so or are looking after their own interests. Take, for example, the Publisher’s book descriptions on Amazon.com. These are always super-positive…they explain why the book is so great and why you should buy it. They would never contain anything negative, never contain anything that might potentially hurt the sales of the book.

And, as a result, the book description tells us exactly what we would expect from a publisher. To Amazon’s credit, they have over time given individual reviews and ratings more prominence on the product page, signaling that that content is more valuable to users. And of course it should be…those people aren’t biased in the way the publishing house is.

Many sites add incentives for recommendations so that people give them more freely. Netflix, for example, allows you to give “free movies” to friends while you tell them about the service. This is a good approach. Netflix does not reward you for this…the act of giving is all that you get. If Netflix did give you a free movie that would introduce too much bias…and while more people might make recommendations it would quickly turn into a case similar to the publishers…as people would realize that there is something in it for the recommender.

Continue Reading: Common Pitfalls of Building Social Web Applications and How to Avoid Them, Part 3

The Netflix team has a blog: Netflix Community Blog (via Sarah)

The blog is interesting for several reasons, most notably the candidness of the posts. In this post on Movie Privacy, for example, the team talks about a new feature whereby you can mark movies private, so as to not show them to your friends. Michael writes:

“So, in a rather unNetflix-like way, we’re just going to release it to Friends users in the next week or so. Let’s see if this finally allows you to connect to folks you know slightly less well (or maybe too well), and for whom you absolutely needed the ability to hide some titles. We’ve all read your comments and suggestions for how best to implement this. Trust me: this isn’t that. It’s not that we’re not hearing your suggestions, it’s just i was interested in getting this in front of you quickly.”

This is really cool! Michael is obviously taking on a community manager type role here, announcing new features and asking for feedback. Saying that their new feature isn’t even the one that users were asking for is pretty interesting, too…how many design teams would do that?

Continue Reading: Netflix is Designing with Community Input

Google’s most recent acquisition, GrandCentral, approaches phone numbers in the same way that Friendster, MySpace, and Facebook approaches social networking: with the person at the center of the service.

Instead of having a phone number tied to a cell plan such as Verizon or AT&T, or a specific technology like a land-line, GrandCentral ties the number to a person. You can have your number for life. Dial one number, all of your phones ring. Makes perfect sense, right?

What we need now is a URL for every person. Then we can reach them by simply specifying a communication type and a domain name…without worrying about numbers, protocols, email addresses, chat handles, or anything else. We should be able to say: “I want to talk on the phone with Joshua Porter(bokardo.com)”. Done…all of my phones ring.

Dialing specific-phone numbers will be like typing in IP addresses. Possible, but painful.

Continue Reading: GrandCentral is People-Centric

Unless you didn’t get near any media outlet last week, you probably saw or heard about the thousands of people who stood in line for Apple’s new iPhone. Many major media outlets had reporters on scene, including the NYTimes, BBC, and LA Times.

Apple has recorded all of this in the iPhone gallery pages on Apple.com. The gallery shows long lines of both happy and exhausted Apple fans, some staying over night to get a chance to purchase the long-awaited iPhone. They also show banks of reporters with huge camera lenses trying to get a perfect shot of the action. And then they show the relief and happiness of the moment of purchase. These people are true fans, and the gallery depicts them as conquering heroes. One almost gets the feeling of religious fervor when looking at all these images.

Continue Reading: Apple’s iPhone and Social Proof

Found a great explanation of social design from Crysta Metcalf of Motorola, who is currently involved in an ethnographic research project to find out how people communicate through technology: (via experientia)

‘When we talk about the “user experience” the main emphasis is often on an individual’s experience with a particular technology. Even with a purported social technology, for example a social networking site, we still tend to create for the individual’s interaction with the site (how does someone find their friend, how do they access this site easily from a mobile device).

However, designing for sociability means thinking about how people experience each other through the technological medium, not just thinking about how they experience the technology. The emphasis is on the human-to-human relationship, not the human-to-technology relationship. This is a crucial difference in design focus. It means designing for an experience between people.

Continue Reading: You can’t be social by yourself

Danah Boyd, who routinely interviews folks who use MySpace and Facebook, says there is a class divide between the services, with Facebook garnering a higher socio-economic class than MySpace.

Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace

As Danah admits, it’s difficult talking about class. I’m always uncomfortable with it because it’s always a spectrum…there is no clear distinction between this class and that class. Even the “cool” kids class had some people who could cross into the “skater” kids class when I was in high school. Also, talking about class can only reinforce it. To that end I wonder what sorts of things we’re going to learn from this distinction…does talking about class make us any smarter, or simply make us more likely to make class distinctions? (to her credit: Danah makes it clear that she’s having a hard time discussing this).

One way that I think would be interesting to cut up the populations would be activity. Are the people using MySpace for different reasons than Facebook? Are the two services equivalent from a tool standpoint? What about people who use both? It seems that Danah is talking about them equivalently, although in this case that’s not the focus of her piece so I don’t know for sure.

Continue Reading: Social Classes on Networking Sites

John Dvorak, the famous Mac linkbaiter, who let everyone in on his linkbaiting strategy a while back, can’t understand why anyone would care a whit about Twitter:

“I cannot understand why anyone would want to do this, or why anyone would want to read these posts.

In the past, I would just go off on the subject, as I did with blogging and podcasting when they first appeared. Since then, I’ve become a blogger and a podcaster and have been rebuked for my earlier opinions. On the Internet, they never forget.

So I’m thinking that I should be more analytical in a positive way. I say this even though this is one fad I cannot imagine wasting my time on.

At the risk of linking to Dvorak’s piece, this is actually a widely-held view of not only Twitter, but of much of social software in general. It is difficult to understand why others would use social apps…what value is all that chattering?

Continue Reading: The Opaque Value Problem (or, Why do people use Twitter?)