Social Mediaesque Design

I’m curious how long this design trend will last.  You know what I mean: the clouds, the curved corners, the module/widget look, the large slightly-cartoonish fonts, the in-your-face buttons. Examples: GOP.gov OR  Whitehouse.gov.

These designs, which I assume are user-friendly (they seem so), are certainly better than what preceded it.  But the time seems ripe for a creative designer to start doing something a bit different.

You know it’s about to change when all the political sites start to jump on the bandwagon.

Great widget on GOP.com

On of the blog posts on techpresident.com talked about the new GOP.com.   

The widget that caught my attention was a little dohicky on the home page that allows users to seamlessly glance at the feeds from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr.  On the Facebook feed, it showed a selection of people who support GOP.com.  Of course, I recognized some of them, as they came from my friend list.  Always interesting to learn who supports GOP.com—particularly, when it’s unexpected.

techpresident.com....sweet.

Thanks to Allan Rosenblatt, I just looked at techpresident.com for this first time.  Interesting site with some cool features and cooler information.   Particularly nice that it attempts to be non-partisan.

This site integrates and integrates and then integrates some more.  Specifically, it integrates data from social networks directly into modules on its site.  For example, it collects data directly from Facebook and plots it on a colorful graph.  This instant visual perspective of “friend” supporters of different presidential candidates is informative, but, more importantly, shows how far ahead of the field Obama actually is.  (Although we need to admit, that Obama’s popularity is far more a function of who he is rather than his ass-kicking digital strategy).

Another nice integration feature is the Politickr which—on one page—shows the feeds from different social media outlets (YouTube, Twitter, blogs, etc.).  In quick glance, you can get a sense of what each campaign (or at this time, I suppose I should say campaign in remission) is writing about.

Another great integration is with Technorati.  On a series of charts, you see a graphical depiction of how often the candidates are mentioned in the blogosphere.

The MySpace Mess

Wow.  I went onto MySpace for the first time today and was greeted by a huge, unappetizing Wendy’s hamburger.  The whole thing was a gaggle of banner ads and consumer-driven navigation.

As a three-year facebooker, this was an odd experience.

I plugged in a search term and found four thick rows of sponsored links before I got any search results.

The whole thing was kind of like a nightmare—pictures of minor celebrities doing strange things, banner ads with seductively creepy women, and a wireframe architecture that was a cluttered, headache-inducing wreck.  

To Be Anonymous or To Not Be Anonymous

Dan Gilmore’s book We the Media focuses much attention on privacy and anonymity.  That’s what I want to look at today, because it has significant implications in the age of social computing.

As Gilmore points out, “Technology has given us a world in which almost anyone can publish a credible-looking webpage” (174).  I might extend this sentiment by proposing that technology increasingly allows us to have a credible-looking existence.  By that, I mean that social computing has taken individual branding to a new level.  Online tools are readily available to help create entire personas.   

And people, many people, have done just that.    

There are countless examples of folks who have made their voice known online and attracted hundreds, if not thousands of “followers.”   It’s amazing how this has empowered so many who previously had no outlet.   This has been both a good and a bad thing, although I think the general trend is toward the good.

As more and more people make their voice known, credibility becomes increasingly important, and as Gilmore suggests, credibility and anonymity are closely connected: “Credibility…comes from a willingness to stand behind [your] arguments when a compelling reason to stay anonymous is absent” (181).

Media discussion boards are good examples of online credibility.  Take a peek at a Washington Post comment section after an article.  You will see hundreds of angry, thoughtless diatribes about everything related or not related to the article.  Of course mixed in, you’ll find thoughtful and serious posts; but these get crowded out under the din of the obnoxious, intentionally disruptive, anonymous poster—or the “troll”.  I’d suggest that this is largely a function of the fact that the Post allows anyone to comment and comment anonymously. 

On the other hand, the Wall Street Journal requires you to provide your real name and email address.  To comment you must be a paying subscriber.  The quality of these posts is generally more thoughtful, with the angry diatribe posts, few and far between.  It seems that when people are forced to identify themselves in some way, the trollness subsides.  Trollism is of the same family as mob behavior. 

I’m not trying to suggest that we eliminate anonymity on the web anymore than we would in the real world.  But that’s just the thing.  If you had an entire conversation with someone and then learned that he had simply been playing an obnoxious devil’s advocate the whole time, it would be odd and uncomfortable.  At the same time, most people don’t want to announce to world who they are when they’re at the grocery store.

Gilmore basically is basically suggesting that like everything else that’s new, the norms are now being established.  As those norms solidify, one’s ability to be anonymous should be preserved, unless that person wants to “go public.”  At the same time, if you really want to establish credibility, you need to lift the anonymous veil sooner rather than later.

Too Much Tweeting?

I’ve noticed on my Twitter feed that certain folks/organizations tweet all the time—five, six, ten times a day.  They tweet so much that I begin to gloss over their tweets and look for those that don’t tweet so much.  Maybe it’s just me.

At the same time, if an organization tweeted one awesome tweet a day wouldn’t that be more effective?  Maybe…maybe not.  I’m just not sure yet.  One tweet a day means that you might miss it, but with so many tweets you might miss the important one anyway.

Maybe Twitter needs some method to weed out the less important tweets?  Does that already exist?

Mobile Technology as Campaign Tool—part 2

Interestingly, In Tracking Your Supporters: Events and Location-Based Services Jim Udall discussed the potential of using your mobile device as a locator.  There seems to be promise in this as groups will be able to come together with ease.  It does beg the question, however, when would I really need to use this?   Still, it’s cool/scary (depending on your perspective) that technology like this is readily available to anyone.