Lots of factors contribute to a successful online presence for a brand in today’s clued-up consumer world. No longer can you say something on a tv ad (through a celebrity or half-naked model) and we’ll buy it – both what you say and you product. These days people – experienced, slightly-cynical, digitally-networked, and information-rich consumers – will do alot more research to buy most things. Probably the item’s value corresponding to the amount of research done. And researching is so easy. Thanks to the continual advancement of search engines, and the web as a whole, 10 minutes in front of a PC is enough to unearth all the bad things people have ever said about your product, brand, CEO, website, or service. That’s right, once it’s out there it’s there to stay. But it’s not just the access to more information, demos, (price) comparisons, professional reviews, images, and so on. It’s the increased access to people, those we know and those we don’t.

People have always asked for the opinions of their friends and family when researching purchases but the proliferation of instant messenger (MSN), internet telephony (Skype), forums, social networking (twitter, facebook), and articles and user comments mean real opinions are never hard to find. Even online playback of tv shows like iPlayer or on YouTube mean tv shows you miss can be re-watched on the web. In this type of consumer world the brands are faced with potential time bombs in every thing they do, customer-facing or not. Do something fishy and there’s always someone on hand with a camera phone and a one-click-publishing button just waiting to post it online and be the creator of the next big brand-bashing viral piece. It’s like David slaying (or slightly embarrassing) Goliath. There’s only one way brands can win. It’s ground-breaking and possibly controversial but they’ll just have to be nice to their customers …

As the normal everyday user merrily uses their selection of social networking platforms (mine are twitter, facebook, linkedin, delicious) there’s a constant battle between them to steal users, and improve their own offering with this ultimate goal in mind. This is great for us as it leads to improved sites, more useful web utilities, and a better all round experience. Working in an agency, we’re occasionally asked to start new online communities. It’s not easy.

To be truly useful you need people to sign up and often the main reason people sign up is because ‘everyone I know is using it’. Of course that is more the case for Facebook where the very personal style of networking (with photos, relationship updates, sending gifts, etc.) meant you ‘needed’ to use it to effectively stay in touch with people you already knew. As someone on Twitter (a great source of learning) put it: Facebook’s for people you know, Twitter’s for people you want to know. In effect, once a site like Facebook grabs the lion’s share of ‘your’ friends there’s no reason for many to leave.

Add in the fact many users don’t demand the most sophisticated functionality, there’s even more inertia for users to switch platform. Other platforms like social bookmarking may be less tribal, or more individual, so as long as I find something better or cheaper, I can move knowing I’m not leaving my entire social life behind! A social networking platform must be useful. It has to do one thing well to survive. Linkedin helps people connect professionally without polluting the space with holiday photos or ‘fun’ videos. Flickr is all about photos. Ok, they do video now but can anyone outmuscle YouTube with the headstart they have. The sheer volume of videos they have up there mean for videos that’s often the first port-of-call. As a direct result, they get more videos. It’s almost like a vicious circle. Finding a niche is always a good starting point.

Platforms like Ning do this well. Letting people build their own networks around specific interests. However, I think it’s still all about numbers. The more people you can get signed up, the greater the pressure on the rest not to get left behind.

Yesterday it dawned on me that the advent of social networks, email and the internet as a publishing platform means two things for future generations:

1. Kids will never, ever lose touch with their childhood friends anymore (unless they want to!). An email adress (or parents exchanging email addresses / facebook IDs / Twitter IDs …) will be enough to ensure you can find that person decades later in one morning session on Google.
2. Decades later, I’ll have to live through my kids going through my Twitter / Blogging history, in full public view, on a boring summer afternoon while I’m at work.

Something we’re not fully understanding at the moment – because we’re so enthralled and entertained by the current Web 2.0 platforms – is the longevity the content we generate can potentially have. Whereas we learnt about previous generations lives through tatty old photos and stories relayed to us, future generations probably only have to spend an afternoon on Google to unearth our most detailed thoughts and postings from years / decades back on various social networks, blog platforms, forums, and so on. They may be able to re-live years of our lives on a day-by-day, minute-by-minute basis; mapping out what we did, where we were, what we thought, who we were with and photos / videos of the event. That’s somewhat freaky … but I suspect we have to get used to this fact.

Even websites that were taken offline a number of years ago can be dug up through the Wayback Machine. Using this site, I unearthed previous incarnations of my website and was horrified at my primative (alright, I may not be much better now) web design skills back then.

Things you say and do on the web, echo for eternity on Google …

Btw, if my kids are reading this, hi!

In my first attempt to understand Twitter, it went totally over my head. It wasn’t that I didn’t feel it suited me, it was simply I didn’t know how / why I should use it. For my second attempt some months later (admittedly driven by a need to understand it for work purposes and from a technological platform angle) it became second nature.

One of the things that fascinated a non-technie like me was the ability to update my nano-blog via mobile (first by text message, then later by native mobile app / mobile web) which was something I couldn’t do at that time through my blog. This appealed greatly to someone like me who had a lot of idle ‘bloggable’ time spent on the bus each day, but not much idle time available at home. So from a practicality point-of-view, it was very useful. But also, being able to type something into a mobile phone and later see it online was, and still is, awesome.

Secondly, another barrier to blogging is that blog posts, in my mind, have become long, thought-out pieces that require research, a good introduction, a sound argument and a solid conclusion. Way too much work for idle minds like mine. Good blogs are now about a particular subject, and have an editorial direction. They have become useful resources. Otherwise they become a blog about my life and my dog, which is soooo Web 1.0. So Twitter’s 140 character-limit was perfect. I could have done that via Facebook status updates but then again, Facebook status updates go to your Facebook friends – an established audience – which affected the things I’d want to write there. There’s no point writing about IA for instance, if you’re the ‘only IA in the village’ so to speak. Nah. On Twitter I can write what I like, and if you choose to follow me, well, that’s your choice then.

Thirdly, I can choose to follow (and learn from) some really interesting, insightful people. And if I wanted to, I could have a dialogue with them.

And fnally, I can choose to receive as much info as I want. So, unlike using instant messenger or chat, it’s not something that interrupts me and requires my attention instantly. It’s something that happens in the background that I can jump into when I like, as often as I like.

So Twitter’s not for everyone but it happens to serve my needs perfectly!

This post might not make great reading. It’s more or less a ‘note dump’ from the talk.

I found most parts interesting. It focused on the present and future of mobile applications, the design and development process and also the usability intricacies of designing for mobile.

As I was particularly busy at work that day, I missed the opening part and only managed to catch the last two talks. Luckily, the last one was usability focused.

The earlier talk focused on the design and development process and detailed the benefits of designers and developers talking to each other, working closely together, and not’hand over’ documentation. In other words, the earlier you get things ‘working’ and tested (even by ‘guerillas’) then the quicker it is to spot technical and usability issues. I think this also depends on your ability to draw on whiteboards, ‘think’ and decision-make on whiteboards.

Points of note:

• A lot of users prefer to use mobile web apps on their desktops. Being designed for the more constrictive medium of mobile, these apps tend to be more streamlined, only contain the most most important features and contain less / no advertising.
• In terms of the diversity of handsets (as opposed to the handful of web browsers), you must know your target audience and pick the leading 5 phones for them. This should cover around 70% of your users. The settings for the leading 5 phones should also account for the numerous ‘brother & sister’ handsets derived from them.
• Be wary of the numerous possible errors / situations users can run into while using the app. Things like losing network connections, incoming calls, contact list errors, etc.
• Different usage patterns. Users generally use mobile apps for shorter periods of around 30 seconds but its a more personal relationship.
• Bear in mind, some mobile phones have a maximum file size for apps.
• Allow users to enter their location (as opposed to GPS) as that is often more accurate.

3 types of apps used by mobile web users:

• Mobile native: this is the app you download to your phone. As far as I can distinguish, it’s run independently of any phone browser. Problems include a less current set of data. For instance, the Facebook version shown pulled in out-dated ‘status updates’.
• Mobile web: this appears to be using the web to access mobile versions of sites. These are ‘more straightforward but a little sloppy’.
• Desktop adapted: this is using the browser to access the full (desktop version) website. Often only allows users to see navigation, which is often located before the content.