Comments (2)

By Tai, June 8, 2010 12:15 pm

I’ve always been keen on explaining the Why of things. This entry is about Why I chose to use the local product LinkHay, a Vietnamese social news service, over

1. Relevant community: while Digg clearly has a wider range of influencers, the local community gives me networking opportunities much more relevant to what I’m working on
2. Relevant contents: contents relevant to the environment I’m working and living in
3. Good product: fast, fairly good usability and a pleasant enough design
4. Higher buyer bargaining power: I clearly have more bargaining power in giving feedback, suggestions and requests for a product that has 50,000 users (as of June 2010) compared to 3 million of Digg

LinkHay doesn’t only kill Digg in my online usage, but eats up Twitter as a information gathering tool.

In sum, the ingredients to build a local product to compete with global giants are: a good niché, good product/service and relevance.

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By Tai, November 7, 2009 7:28 am

1. I intend to ask this question from those who don’t like the redesign in October 2009: “Had you been using Facebook before March 2009?”

The reason is that I was fine with Facebook’s newsfeed prior March 2009. When they redesigned to move to content in March 2009, I backed out from the site. Then I love it again after the October 2009.

2. A note on usability: “Edit Options” of Live Feed should be put on top of the newsfeed, where “News Feed” and “Live Feed” are, not at the bottom

3. Things Facebook can improve:

• Categorize feed items. Some want to filter types of items. e.g. hide “my friend adds abc as friend” items
• “Show More” should also provide options for feed item type, besides friends

***

Addendum

This is my explanation to my friends who are not familiar with the history and the story behind:

Before March 2009, the newsfeed had contained personal updates from your friends. e.g. photos, relationship, updates of profile, who makes friend with whom. I name this “Relationship”. Additionally, they had been experimenting a primitive Live Feed

In March 2009, FB redesigned the newsfeed and it was swarmed with games, quizzes and other application updates. I name this “Content”. A pseudo-live feed was provided, but you have to click “n updates” to see these updates - a pain.

In October 2009 which is the current, the newsfeed blends between Relationship and Content. The Live Feed is also smooth and automatically scrolling…. Read More

I personally love the October 2009 one.

***

The story behind Relationship and Content relate to competitive & strategic moves between Facebook, Twitter, Friendfeed, Digg and other services.

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By Tai, September 18, 2009 11:06 pm

Theoretically, it is sensible for a Profile to be the center of a wide range of social features and the social platform. Just why Yahoo! has Yahoo! Profile for its Open Strategy.

Nevertheless, major updates have been realized in Yahoo! Mail.

Firstly, the front page now includes updates from a user’s connections.

Then applications start to appear in Yahoo! Mail.

It is reasonable too why Yahoo! Mail is an ideal destination for such updates. People will more likely login their inbox than in their “profile”. Plus, Yahoo! Mail being the top email service is still Yahoo!’s ace in communication. Think about profiles, why would one want to login their profile while they are having a Facebook?

After all, it’s a bit confusing as to what kind of updates I expect to see in Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! Profile. Nevertheless, should Yahoo! concentrate their efforts in just one. If so, may I suggest Yahoo! Mail?