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By TaiTran, February 19, 2009 3:10 pm

Creating a Profile is not the right way.

1. Relationship: People make friends with people, not with an entity (brand, object, product, institute…)
2. There is the limit in the maximum number of people a profile can make friends with: 5000. If they have hit the limit, they won’t make friend with the profile you create
3. When people have too many connections, it becomes sluggish for them to perform actions that require the friend list to load:
   1. Tag photos
   2. Tag videos
   3. Suggest friends
   4. Search friends

Creating a Group is not the optimal way either.

1. There is the limit in the maximum number of groups a profile can join: 200. If they have hit the limit, they won’t join the group you create
2. Relationship: people form groups to get to know one another who share the same interest

Creating a Fan Page is the right way.

1. Relationship: It clearly defines the relationship between the entity (brand, object, product, institute…) with its fans/supporters
2. There is no limit in the maximum number of pages a profile can become fan for, or at least I haven’t hit that cap

In Sum

1. Create real profiles for real staff
2. People love to interact with real people
3. Separate the people-people and subject-fans relationships
4. Be professional on the subject, be slightly personal on the profiles (of real staff)

Addendum

Tagging people in the marketing pitch is a smart move, but don’t overdo it.

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By TaiTran, February 10, 2009 3:31 am

The three stories that trigger this post

I’ve been occupied with some thoughts resulting from some articles I read or discussions I joined for some time. Here are three of them:

Story 1: focus

AnhHung and I had a discussion in our three blog posts on whether companies would want to pick a direction and fully focus or experiment with their ideas.

Just a quick note: I explicitly express my support for neither, in my post I pointed out where experiment is sensible.

Story 2: the registration form

Here is the story of how changing a button brings $300 million revenues.

I didn’t get it. That was not a small change in “only a button”. That was a major change in flow + database + architecture + graphic design, and it resulted from an R&D result.

With a change at that level, the Product Manager, Business Analyst (if any), System Designer (if any), Project Manager, DBA, Developer should be involved. Why does the article only highlight the designer?

Story 3: prototyping

Today I read about how great products like Gmail and AdSense were born from experiments and thought about where innovation should be placed. Before Paul had done what he did, AdSense had been a laugh, and because he did his experiment, Google had a billions-worth business.

However, some Gmail’s siblings from Labs didn’t make it.

So should they continue their experiments or should they focus?

The points we missed

Comparing different ambiances where the stories took place helped me realize the points we did not take into accounts which could somehow relieve the thoughts in my mind.

1. Type of product

1a. The reason why I put the flow from story 2 on the table was that we once had an issue when a developer changed a flow to make it more convenient for users and changed a form design to make it more attractive without going through the Business Analyst. When I saw the changes I freaked out as the they violated some regulations of the industry and we had to quickly revert the system before releasing to clients. It is not to blame anyone, it is to clearly state that there are might be reasons why something so inconvenient stays in the system.

However, for products that come from new & creative ideas, innovation deserves its space and time. If changes and new features suggestions must go through a lengthy process, two things could arise: the product does not move fast enough and the idea initiators might get frustrated and gradually lose their passion.

1b. Another aspect is whether the product is commercial or customized. Commercial products are offered to a large number of clients, and customized products are usually ordered by specific clients for their use only. For commercial products, the product team to brainstorm improvements and clients’ input take the form of feed backs. For customized products, users’ response can be obtained by taking the product directly to the client.

2. Software methodology

If the team employs Rational Unified Process, changes must go through change management process. If the team goes Agile, changes can be implemented quicker with more clients involvements. Smaller teams might be even more flexible.

If RUP is used then it’s valid to question where the Business Analyst is in a change, but if the process is different, it’s perfectly okay for the web designer to initiate a usability improvement.

3. Corporate type: established or startup

A good example to take is Google itself. There are tales about how open it was and how data was easily accessible and how anti-corporate the team was when the company was still a startup. But now Google is a mature enterprise with corporate hierarchy and naturally enough management practices are in place.

How large the companies are is a big factor in their choosing strategies.

And it’s funny if we compare a public company with 20 thousands employees to a startup with ten people.

4. Era

The time when Gmail took of and the time 6 of her siblings were axed are not the same. 2004 was a good year to start a new service and 2009 is when companies need to cut costs.

5. Position

Lastly, the arguments people brings to a discussion of one topic vary depending on their perspective and position.

For example, the product builder might want to try out with different intiatives, the analyst might want to draw the patterns, the marketer might want to emphasize the position of the brand, the venture capitalist might want to see a business model out of an idea.

It’s fascinating how we have different people with different interests joining together and personally this reminds me that sometimes we can never reach a consensus from a debate.

Summary

This entry is meant to organize some fighting thoughts inside my mind and that’s all it should do.

I don’t intend to make a point here, but I hope you enjoyed the articles that I quoted. Here they are again for your convenience:

Jared M. Spool, The $300 Million Button

Paul Buchheit, Communicating with code

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By TaiTran, February 9, 2009 1:06 am

I have deactivated my Plurk account 5 months ago but this item has been of lower priority I can only find time for it now.

Here are some reasons why I deactivated my account from this very interesting service.

Just a quick note: maybe it’s unfair to compare Plurk with Twitter  all the time but I can’t help it.

1. Audience

Some social media power users are active on Twitter, but not on Plurk or FriendFeed. Spending time on Plurk rather than Twitter means my information gathering is not as efficient.

2. Twitter ecology

Twitter grew 400% last year, and so did its ecology: all the applications built around Twitter.

Plurk doesn’t have this.

3. Cross-platform issue

When I want to plurk, I want the plurk tweeted too. This can be solved by using a third-party service such as ping.fm

However, ping.fm is unstable some time.

(1), (2) and (3) above are not Plurk’s faults. It’s just unfair that Plurk was born much later than Twitter.

Now, here are some issues I was having directly involving Plurk.

4. Weird mascots

Twitter uses bird, owl and whale for their design. Kinda cute the bird is.

Plurk pushes this further by introducing fish, lizards, ancient animals, beholders, alien-like creatures… It’s too much to endure. I would not want any of my profile appeared to my colleagues or grad school administrative or potential employers as unprofessional.

5. Too slow, compared to Twitter

The whole idea of micro-blogging / public timeline is to broadcast your message fast. Plurk interface is definitely more interesting than that of Twitter but it’s much slower to load.

6. Privacy option

Maybe it’s just me but I have the need to, at certain points of time, hide all my statuses from public view. Plurk doesn’t provide this while Twitter does.

7. Reward system and penalties

Plurkers receive Karma for plurking, and they receive penalties (Karma reduction) for not plurking.

Sadly, but I don’t feed my family on social media, let alone Plurk. I can’t spend my time with Plurk everyday to reach Nirvana and maintain my position there.

A reward system is pretty, especially for ones who want to become power users, but the penalty is ugly, drives me away from the service.

***

So there, I stopped at 60+ Karma and reset my entire account.

I’m not commenting on Plurk’s possibility of success. I was just telling my experience with this service.

Good luck anyway, Plurk team. All the best. TaiTran