Sacca, Twitter and why should we care?
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Last month, at The Next Web 2009, Chris Sacca – investor in Twitter, was interviewed on stage and also chaired a panel about the Twitter ecosystem. The following post is a combination of his comments. Before being a major investor in Twitter, Sacca worked for Google, where he ran the the alternative access division, whose ambitious aim was to get everybody connected to the internet. They mostly focused on user experience and solving user problems. |
What Google does
 Bradley Horowitz at The Next Web 09 courtesy ofDailyM |
After Jeff Jarvis had his take on Google we had somebody from the inside – Bradley Horowitz.Horowitz was the man who advised Yahoo to buy Flickr and after redefining his role there he made them acquire Delicious. Previously he had formed Virage (video categorization engine) and sold it to Autonomy after dropping out of his degree at MIT Medialab where he worked on image categorisation technologies. Read more… |
Tipping point – beyond 2.0
 Jeff Jarvis (left) and Andrew Keen courtesy of Ann Helmond
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Jeff Jarvis (author of What Would Google Do?) and Andrew Keen (author of The Cult of the Amateur) painted opposing views of the techno-cultural landscape. Keen actually regarded Jarvis as a ‘cheerleader’ for Google although Jarvis himself said he used the company as an example for changes in the real world. |
Impact of Web 2.0 on Search
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Ricardo Baeza-Yates gave us Yahoo’s view that they do not believe in black boxes as a way to solve the complexities of search but that its more about what can be learnt from users.
Of course nothing new here but he gave a holistic view about how Yahoo is addressing the different areas of the conundrum. |
Engagement and optimisation: Defining behaviours
Photo by Nicholas Nova
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The second of a seven part post about optimising a site to create a more engaged audience. Here we look at user behaviour and how methods used help ensure you address user needs. Previously: Success metrics |
Engagement and optimisation: Success Metrics
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You hear alot about engagement, and not just in the UX community.
How do you engage your website users? What exactly constitutes the different parts of a website’s content that will attract people and make the website an enjoyable experience for them and a profitable one for your business?
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Creating user centred taxonomies
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When you organise content on a web site, how can you be confident its relevant and clear for your users? The following walk-through tells of how you can ensure you build a site with users’ interests at heart.
What is a taxonomy? The term ‘taxonomy’ is a bit of a misnomer, having its origins in Biological study denoting sub-species within a species classification. However, in the business sense of the word, taxonomies can encompass a whole range of different elements that, broadly speaking, are ways of classifying content under categories recognised by a user group. |
Tools and techniques for managing website evolution
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This post started from the ideas of a two-part post written last year by Seth Gottlieb & Brice Dunwoodie. It made me think about a list of tools and techniques that content editors could use whilst editing in a collaborative environment. The post is a point of reference for those involved in the daily running and development of sites that are continually evolving. |
The answer is in the interface
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A recent article by Alex Iskold brilliantly captures the separations of where we imagine semantic search should be and the reality. Even if it were trying to knock Google off a top spot, what he highlights is that it would be an unnecessary exercise. Google does its thing very well. Few would argue with that. Alex suggests that semantic search should do something completely different… |
Building a metadata schema
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A year ago I was involved in a major restructure of 7 major websites. Each had a new taxonomy and controlled vocabulary created. A clear vision of the direction of each site was drawn up and site maps and wireframes produced. The one problem we had, was there wasn’t a generic metadata schema that was adhered to. It was a combination of ad hoc, legacy tags. Some originated from the SEO team and some from the developers and database administrators on each site. |
Optimising images to ensure findability
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Tagging images at source enables a standard to be reached when all images are used during a production process, both for print and online. If they are tagged properly, valuable metadata can be captured inside the JPEG file that can be read by applications later, either on or off line. Read more… |
Managing taxonomies
This post is reflective of the business environment I work in, notably in the B2B publishing sector. However, I feel that all sites would benefit from this approach if they use a site search technology, a CMS and a specialised group of individuals.
Taxonomies on business-to-business websites are industry based around the communities that interact with their content. The problem that many sites find is that the content can evolve and the taxonomy can not adjust to changes in what the content creators produce, or with what advertisers wish to sponsor, with regards to useful popular content. Read more…Tweet
Ambient Findability
I guess you could say this is a meme map of Morville’s observations, research and his ability to see into the future of the trends of Internet based technologies.
Its an interesting, and enlightening, discussion about what we as humans want and need from technology. It seems the text is intended to propagate more discussions and in turn discoveries around the subject of findability and technology. The book certainly makes you think about where we are heading as a society, but also the importance of the products we use and how they become integral to our lives.
Being able to orientate ourselves is a natural human instinct. In the 21st century, findability is a concept that we must ensure is present in the products that are developed (have a look at this great article about its importance just published here on A List Apart).
Its an inspirational read for many reasons, never trying to present answers, but certainly showing the questions that we need to answer if we are to harness the information monster we have created.
You should expect to read something that will present concepts and not case studies or solutions to problems. This book is about the bigger picture and the troubles of information management we face as a society.
Verdict: A philosophical study of where we are, and where we are going that proves Morville is at the forefront of thought leadership when it comes to Information Architecture.
Metadata - signposts in the wilderness
Peter Morville’s book – Ambient Findability, is as much a philosophical muse as a book about the current state of play in the world of search and the future technologies. What he does say however is that the power of metadata is something that we can not underplay the importance of.
I recently have compiled a Metadata schema for the company I work for. Based on the Dublin Core set of rules for metadata and also the IPTC set for news (and PRISM and MIME for file formats) it endeavors to produce a set of metadata standards that can be used for text, images and video or audio file types. Obviously these days tagging your files is an involved process, how do you go about tagging an image for example, Google have made a game of it here
Tags and folksonomies will always be fraught without a metadata approach that has been thought through and applied systematically. It also underpins a good information architecture. Categorization will be successful when metadata has been carefully considered.
Once implemented finding will become an easy task. Content that has taken time and money to create can now be found, enjoyed and re-purposed. Saving money, increasing productivity and giving the user an enjoyable experience.
Now surely everybody can see the business value in investing in metadata and information architecture??Tweet
