Technology As Innovator

How are you with the new design so far?

Tech-savvy users, needless to say, you must have loved Facebook’s new design.

My non-tech Facebook friends, have you familiarized yourself with the new design? Do you still think Facebook makes it hard for you to navigate and locate things you like? Do you miss the old design? Well you know, I have seen the expected results from the new design already. Let me show you:

Have you noticed the change improvement of Facebook Ad?

First thing is in the Ad. I call new Facebook Ad Relationship-based Semantic.

There are two elements: Relationship-based and Semantic.

Relationship-based

The old ad is exactly a same-old vertical banner. No thing new.

The new add is in the form of “Friend A is a fan of Product P”. Wow! Facebook recognizes you and displays ads that feature your friends!

Semantic

Semantic is a little bit more abstract.

Facebook ad caters for relevance of information to you. Information they care about:

• Relationship: ads show faces of your friends
• Location: ads show products/services in your location
• Background: if you are doing or did your tertiary education in an Australian university, the ad might display a Master degree from Australia
• Interest: are you into Rock? ads show Rock performances

Do you have the impression that Facebook starts to understand you?

Why is this a result of the new design?

First thing first, I have to admit that saying “the new smart ad is a result from the new design” is an over-simplified statement.

Can Facebook ad be smart with the old design? Yes!

But it was much harder and would take longer with the old design.

Take a look at the new design:

1. You can comment right on your friends’ statuses
2. You have more spaces on the homepage as well as in your profile. Your profile is no longer crowded with all the applications but applications are separated thus create more spaces
3. Your friends’ Walls are thrown up first so it’s much quicker for you to leave your message
4. Your friend list is now more organized, increases the will to send them messages
5. Photos are displayed in different views, you want to comment more as you see more photos
6. In short, you write a lot more on Facebook’s new design
7. In short, you create a lot more contents on Facebook’s new design

As you create more contents, Facebook understands you more, thus displays more relevant ads to you.

You may argue: ads benefit them (Facebook and its sponsors), not you. Well, to be honest, would you prefer to see a totally non-relevant ad or an ad that might interest you?

What do you think about this? Do you love it or hate it?

Other considerations

Of course, a service provider is a business. Many may have concern of privacy. Google has known MUCH about me, not Facebook does. There’s a chill in the air that there are always people who want to make money keep an eye on every step I take online.

Conclusion

The ad might be beneficial to all three parties: you, Facebook and sponsors. Like it or not, inter-dependence is the driving force that strengthen consumption.

Recently Yahoo!’s strategy has been questioned when they declined to sell to Microsoft or offered their market-leading product Yahoo! Answers.

On product level, although Yahoo! lost 0-4 on social media, the company still has the advantage their teams can take advantage of: branding power and customer loyalty. And they can exploit the advantage to boost their product engagement simply by cloning other services.

For example, Tu has really sharp eyes when he noticed the hints of Yahoo!’s next products: they might try to clone Blogger or Facebook.

In fact, Yahoo!’s recent blogging platform for Hongkong and Vietnam imitated different features from Facebook (friend tagging), WordPress, Windows Live Spaces or Twitter (”Follow” concept under the old name “Add friend”).

With the new Facebook design disliked by somewhat millions users, Yahoo! can attempt to win back their user base by cloning only the simplest features (of course, less effective in data mining) of an advanced social network to target the non-tech-savvy users.

When innovation like Yahoo! Platform still has a long way to go, doing quick fixes on simple things might help Yahoo! in their identity crisis.

What is Twitter?

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users’ updates, which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.

You can follow and have followers on Twitter. Followers can read updates of the followed. Updates from many people that you follow are aggregated on one page.

Why Twitter?

• It’s not real time so you can just leave your message and the intended receiver will pick it up when s/he login
• It’s quick to write small stuffs
• It’s helpful to update activities you wouldn’t normally blog on
• It helps you to stay connected more closely to those you care about

See this video for more information:

What is BackType?

BackType = Comment Tracking + Twitter’s Follow

What BackType does

1. It searches the web for noteworthy comments that might otherwise be lost in the noise
2. It allows you to follow people who leave those comments. Excuse me, are you interested in Michael Arrington, Darren Rowse or Pete Cashmore and want to know what they comment on other blogs? If yes, BackType is the place for you
3. You can submit your link so that BackType would aggregate all comments to your account
4. BackType requires NO installation
5. You can find discussions on you or your services by searching

BackType is NOT CoComment

If you’re not familiar with CoComment, it is a plugin which tracks comments on discussion threads and emails you when there’s an update.

BackType is not CoComment in the fact that CoComment is discussion-based and BackType is URL-based and commenter-based.

Twitter and BackType enforce classification in web users

Twitter’s usage turned from personal to authority

Foremost on Twitter’s homepage you read this:

Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?

The initial intention of Twitter is for people with real relationships to know one another more. And how have power users of Twitter utilized it?

1. Those who have interesting things/opinions to share use Twitter as a sharing channel
2. Businesses use Twitter as an announcement board
3. Service providers use Twitter as a channel to communicate with clients
4. Those who need updates use Twitter as an information goldmine
5. Those who seek to expand their networks use Twitter as a networking tool

In fact, these usages have been emphasized much more than the initial intention of Twitter. Top bloggers and some service providers have utilized Twitter to strike up or engage in conversations, update their lines of services and express their opinions. Twitter has become a place where power media users extend their influence on the web. That’s exactly where all the buzz is about.

Meanwhile, you or I can still follow our ‘real’ connections’ lives, only more quietly.

BackType further boosts the influence power of power users

When BackType was introduced, the enthusiasm burst out almost immediately. People are talking about how BackType is yet another information goldmine: you have always got information from news, blogs, Twitter - now you have comments served on a plate! There they are, your favorite top bloggers right on the front page! Can’t be sweeter.

However, this is where hierarchization forces its way.

Power media users become even more powerful when, by default, they are on BackType’s front page right from its launch. They had the power of opinions on blogs and the power of audience on Twitter yesterday, now they are having more power of comments on BackType.

So what?

Actually I believe it’s a fair game after all. Power users invest their time and efforts to tie their career with the media they create and it’s worth for the recognition they’re gaining. It’s also fair for BackType to try to win quick endorsement from top users by featuring them on the front page.

Just my observation that hyrarchies and long tails have been formed in the web society. Breakthoughs from starters must be done with more innovation & boldness than ever.