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.

First, since the capacity is 7Gb, I have reason to believe that the school’s IT utilizes Gmail service.

Second, providing students with the school email address makes it more professional for communication than a personal mailbox on a free service. The students can use their school email to apply for part-time or free-lance job.

Third, I wonder if there is any difference between email addresses of students and email addresses of the school’s staff?

Last but not least, maybe these students can use their edu email as credentials to join a network on Facebook, instead of the current introduction mechanism.

How to join a network on Facebook

1. Location-based network has no restriction

2. For organization-based network, members must have an email address belonging to their company / organization where they find the verification link from Facebook

3. High schools also have their networks, but since many high school don’t provide school email, joining process is done on introduction basis. Person A requests network N to which s/he belongs. When person B who is a member of that network in real life want to join N, B has to add A as a friend and asks A to confirm that B is actually in N before Facebook adds B to N. Then C shall have to add either A or B and ask for confirmation. This process goes on for subsequent members…

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.

On both Reuters’ and VNExpress’ surveys, men are found most happy going online.

They are actually happy online when they response to the survey more than 2.5 times than women do.

Here is the short list of a few ways I can think of for Twitter’s evolution:

1. Same as that of Facebook: display ads in left & right white spaces
2. Same as that of Google Adword: you tweet “I love cold drink”, an ad for Coca-cola is displayed
3. Same as that of faceViet: display ad between tweets
4. Same as that of vietnamworks: service providers pay Twitter to create a Twitter account specifically for brand-engagement / market research / recruitment / sales. This is politically difficult as the line between a service provider and a non-provider is vague
5. Same as that of many popular blogs providing premium subscription: celebrity Twitterer charge followers for valuable tweets, part of the charge goes to Twitter
6. Same as that of a social-C2C-commerce: Twitters become actual seller & procurers

What are your ideas?

Only after a decade, Phu My Hung in District 7 of Ho Chi Minh City has transformed from a marshy outskirts area to a sharply developing center. The development process of the city requires a lot of labor to provide services (construction, sales, sanitary, maintenance) to the citizens. Not being able to afford the extremely high real estate price in the area, these people are gathering in certain less (much less) luxury vicinities somewhat away from the heart of the city.

Now, adjacent areas such as Him Lam or Trung Son are also growing with no less rapid rate. This development accidentally surrounds the mentioned living blocks of less luxury, creating so-called slums inside the developed city.

Where to plan accommodations for these labor - District 8, District 4 or Binh Chanh? If not planned right now, the slums will grow beyond an easy-to-tackle level, hurting the view of the city and even feng shui setups by many Japanese, Taiwanese, Chinese and local constructors.

This is a true story of my experience of trying out testing a Vietnamese web service. There are many things to improve about its business model, PR strategy, usability, security. In the context of this entry, I only focus on Privacy and Customer Support which raised much concerns in me.

I could have named the service with all screen shots, but eventually I decided to keep it confidential to save space for them to improve on what I have to say here.

The Story

I paid to be trapped!

Company C launched a revamped version of their web service W.

Deciding to try it out, I paid the activation SMS and went to my profile only to end up in horror:

My profile was completely public:

• My email was NOT masked. Full mailto: link
• My phone number which had been used for activation was public
• Postal address was mandatory

I felt like was accurately trapped:

• There was NO option to hide profile from public view (let alone hide from other users)
• There was NO option to change email as it was login credential
• There was NO option to change phone number as it was registered as credential
• There was NO option to delete or deactivate my account
• The only thing I could do was change my postal address, which I had been carefully enough not to put my real postal address in the first place

Bare-naked, trapped, public my profile lay.

Gotta find my way out

Horrified, I looked around the site for a cure and there was 3 options to contact them: email, phone or IM

I emailed them via a form… to receive a script error. I switched from Firefox 3 to IE 7, the form hung. I tried Safari, no help either. There was no sign my email had reached them. No email was given either.

I picked up the phone and dialed their numbers one by one… no answer.

I buzzed their IM… no sign of living.

…helpless…

After two months of continually buzzing them through IM, eventually I was served.

And this is the show conversation:

Translation:

Tai Tran: hello. Ciao

Customer Support: Ciao

Tai Tran: I’m the user of W. I have a request for W to remove my account. I wonder how do I do this?

Customer Support: please provide me your username

Tai Tran: username: <censored>

Customer Support: I deleted it for you

Tai Tran: oh, please let me check it. <verified that my account was deleted from the site> Thanks a lot Have a nice day

When I saw this SQL error upon refreshing, I knew my account was deleted. An SQL command, Run. Simple. Quick. Painless.

I shifted from horrified to stunned:

• S/he should have and could have asked for credentials: email, phone number, secret question, other details. S/he did NOT.
• The Yahoo! account I used had NOTHING relating to my account at W.
• So it means ANY one can delete ANY account just by giving a username which is public.
• On the sale perspective, s/he should have and could have asked the reason why I decided to stop using their service. S/he did NOT.

Shocked. Stunned. Speechless.

Morals Well I understand

I understand that privacy feature consumes their money and time.

I understand that the number of users with very strict requirements for privacy like me isn’t that many.

I understand that the number of users willing to stop using the service after paying isn’t that many.

I understand that Customer Support / Contact Center department is always busy it’s best to solve an issue as quickly as possible.

… so it leaves room, way too much room for improvements.

With growing enthusiasm as well as concerns, it’s high time the alarm was on for media providers and media consumers.

My suggestions

I have some tips to give away on this

1. Provide privacy options. To save web service providers efforts to analyze, I give away a high-level specification on privacy for free below
2. Do NOT enforce poor privacy on users. If it’s your policy not to allow certain amendment, speak it out before registrants hit Submit on registration form.
3. Start training programs for your crew so each could do the sale.

FREE specification of Privacy Options

What do you think of this story? How do you react when realizing that your privacy was not guaranteed?

1. It’s from a survey on a VNExpress, Vietnam’s number 1 online newspaper. Readers from other news don’t see this poll
2. Readers using a RSS Reader who are more tech-savvy don’t see this poll
3. The poll only asks for the most usage from voters, no multiple-choice. Consequence: the result doesn’t reflect the actual time people spend on web
4. Perception: some voters might confuse “activities that take most time” with “activities that add most values”
5. Readers interested in other columns might totally skip this article, let alone scroll down, click and fill in the capcha to vote
6. The survey is not done officially but is only a side poll on a very different article
7. Many people might have voted on “News” to show their support for VNExpress, like the behavior of bookmarking Google
8. I’m quite surprised Online Game was not in the list
9. If VNExpress’ intention for this survey to show that Social Networking is depressing Porn, they might have failed because
   • Porn percentage is 2.4 times that of Social Networking plus Blogging
   • No historical data (i.e. the same survey in 2007) were shown to indicate that Social Networking is really growing over porn
   • Even if (I say if) percentage of porn surfing in 2008 is less than the volume in previous years, absolute number or ‘quality’ of porn surf might not have decreased because obviously there are more Internet users in Vietnam than in previous years
10. Is FPT spreading the good words on social networking to pave the way for its new Social Network? If yes, I wonder why the article misses Online Game - one current FPT business - though.
11. While the scientific validity and reliability of this survey are highly questionable, it can be read in certain ways that prove certain arguments.

Chip did a very nice coverage with her immediate post Twitter SaiGon 1st Gathering. Thanks a lot Chip, it wouldn’t never have been successful without you.

B. What happened in details

The detailed agenda included the normal information exchange and 3 main sections as listed below:

B. 1. E-Learner Platform 2.0

Two students, Mat and Hung, and starting to build their grand program on teaching children on an E-Learning environment which emphasizes Openness and Cost-saving and takes advantages of Web 2.0

Hung’s presentation immediately inspired many interesting debates. Apart from popular arguments on technology, costs and practicability of the tools, what impressed me most was that we brought the Willingness for Alternative Solutions on the table. We didn’t stop at the fad of new tools, we touched the heart of a Mindset issue.

For now, to avoid repeating Hung’s words duplicating Hung’s contents, I invite you to CLICK HERE to see their slide show for the program.

B. 2. BarCamp Saigon

“BarCamp is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos and interaction from participants.”

So why would you want to join the BarCamp in Saigon:

1. If you’re a geek, you know what you do
2. If you’re in the technology field, this is a chance for you to meet with people with similar interests love
3. It’s a learning opportunity
4. It’s not only for networking. It’s open and honest
5. It’s a chance for you to see, hear, touch and talk about new things fresh right out of people’s head
6. If you’re an analyst, come over here to this information goldmine
7. Even if you’re not in technology, you might want to come here and share the problems you have in your jobs and maybe someone with a technical expertise can help with a solution you’ve never thought of
8. Start-ups, meet people here!
9. Venture capitalists, all geek faces around the region are here
10. Please feel free to add your point here or with a comment below

Please simply put the date in your calendar: 15/11/2008

B. 3. Mentioning some web services

Google, Navigos’ Caravat and Yahoo! Portal clone Timnhanh. Only quickly through though; we didn’t dig deep down on each.

B. 4. An investment opportunity

…on technology, blogging and media… something that’s never been done in Vietnam.

You don’t want to miss the next part. I know you don’t want to miss the next gathering. Please CLICK HERE to subscribe, you’ll never miss the next good things.

C. My Key Observations

Obviously, the topics don’t want to go away from my mind so easily. There are some few things I’ve observed from our gathering that I’d like to share:

C. 1. CommunicatioN first, then media

The gathering is an evidence of “CommunicatioN, not CommunicationS“. Technology (Twitter) serves as a platform to build and strengthen the human quality of communicatioN.

C. 2. Synergistic power

Unlike networking functions I had previously attended/organized, the gathering was full of positive, creative and synergistic energy, thanks to the burning passion and rich ideas from each attendant.

In other words, it was networking not for the sake of sheer networking. It happens when the good comes first, rather than the goods come first.

How do you agree with me?

C. 3. The internet is so full & rich has it fully reached the users?

This exclamation came from N., a non-tech-savvy professional: “The internet is so rich. I only have a Facebook and a LinkedIn”. This brought 2 thoughts up on me:

1. It reminds me of “Way of a Scientist” that I was thinking hard on one year ago.

We (solution providers) want to keep users from the complexity of technology.

2. It’s a good excuse for me to bring this statistics on the table: 58% of people don’t know what social networking is.

How about Vietnamese users? What is the percentage do you think? I believe that analyzing my following suggestions would be useful:

1. The opportunities of expressing via more traditional channels. This should help justifying the love for blogging in many Vietnamese users
2. The willingness to look for alternatives. This should help explaining Yahoo! 360’s huge success in Vietnam
3. The amount of time an average Vietnamese spend on online activities as compared to their peers in some other countries such as US or Japan. This should help reasoning the growth of social networks.
4. Physical distance between Vietnamese mutual connection. This might help with analyzing micro-blogging.

C. 4. Globalization

Kevin gave us a compliment “This is the first time we mid expats and Vietnamese that works!” Thanks Kevin, I don’t know about others, but if I am to name one thing that pushes me on, it would be my conviction in being a “Global Villager”.

Hold your breath…

…the next event is coming soon…

The information on VietnamNet might be incorrect: “HSBC có vốn điều lệ một nghìn tỷ đồng. Standard Chartered có vốn điều lệ một nghìn tỷ đồng.”.

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.

Addendum

Yahoo! shut down their “social network experiment” Mash just a few days before. Generally people agreed with this decision, Mash was too weak even for a marginal project to last.

Tai Tran's Lab: Technology As Innovator

Update

This slide made it to slideshare front page on September 6, 2008. Thanks SlideShare team!

target=”_blank”

…because you don’t want people to leave your page when they click a link.

People don’t want to leave a page when they haven’t finished reading either.

Describe your link and explicitly say “Click here”

Throw your RSS subscription options out

• For tech-savvy readers, RSS icon is all they need. Show off this in an easy-to-spot place
• For non tech-savvy readers, offer email subscription at the end of an entry. Since around 85% traffic comes from search / social media, readers normally jump right in one post of yours and you want to keep them by offering them the option when they finish their reading.
• To many who are not familiar with RSS subscription, the word “Subscribe” sounds like they’re being charged to receive service. Make it clear to them that subscription is free.

Previous posts

Click here to read the first 4 tips in the series.

Click here to read the next 4 tips in the series.

3 September 2008

Positive review: SaigonNezumi, Google Chrome - What a browser should be -> Simple

A nice coverage: Chip 2.0, Review after the first day launching Chrome

Not-so-positive review: Google Chrome, it’s not worth the Buzz

Why Google Chrome is not only a cost-saving basket

On Finance’s side: GOOG’s Chrome is all about Wall Street.

TaiTran’s comment: Chrome is only only a cost-saving basket, but a full house for wealth for Google.

1. OK, the money that Google is saving as depicted in Zdnet’s article is the kitchen.
2. Chrome knows all your web activities. Google will sell smarter ads and thus their revenue from ads will increase. This is the bedroom.
3. Chrome is the O/S for the web
   Recall: what’s the 2 most successful properties of Microsoft? Windows and Office
   Has Google got Office? Absolutely. Now Chrome is Google’s Operating System.
   This is the living room.
4. Chrome being open-source will attract the communities (many from Mozilla) who will work for Chrome (more accurately, GOOG) for credit rather than wages. This is the bath room.
5. Chrome will be the web platform on which many applications and SaaS will base on: free dependency is never a free lunch. This is the dining room.
6. Chrome being very light will integrate deeply with Android for penetrating into Mobile market. This is the garden.

In short, all about making money in the long run, given that Chrome will succeed. How successful do you think Chrome will be?

Testing Chrome

1. Is faster than FF3
2. Failed to import bookmarks from my FF3
3. Offers more free space by pushing the tab bar to the very top
4. Doesn’t destroy the layout when zoom in. This is both good and bad.
5. Doesn’t display XML correctly
6. Supports built-in 48 languages
7. Connects to Google services at full speed
8. Uses same web standard with Firefox
9. Provides context-sensitive status bar
10. No RSS auto-detectio
11. No support for Quick Time
12. AdBlock will be highly political
13. Smart start page: recently visited sites
14. Flickr “Web upload” does not work
15. The address bar is a search bar
16. Facebook and Zoho Javascript errors
    

Chrome About Pages

1 September 2008

Google’s official announcement: we hit “send” a bit early on a comic book

Tad was skeptical with 7 reasons why Chrome is a bad idea

Technologizer raised 10 questions

Agglom scanned the catoon

Google Blogoscoped threw the first bomb

You have been the one who teaches the web semantic meanings by tagging and linking information.

How much can You involve in organizing the web? The next step is You can change the order of Google search results.

Google Search started off one decade ago in 1998 with their search algorithm, and it’s been the core of their success till now. As the time grows, Google grew to be #1 search engine but has been facing a lot of challenges. Not only including Yahoo! and Live and Ask, the list of competitors is crowded with Wikia search, Cuil, Visual Search and many more. From this list, Mahalo and Wikia involve users in where they can provide feedbacks to the search results.

So what’s next from Google? An experiment to allow Google user to re-rank the search results. You can see the arrows in the screenshot below:

This is, again, only their experiment. But ain’t it interesting to follow?

My wonder is: does this feature collaborative or simply personal? How will Google absorb this feedback channel - algorithmically or mass-manually?

What do you think of this feature from Google?

Read more on their experiments on Search

So to answer his question, I’d like to share what I’m thinking:

1. Investment in emerging markets

The reason is that emerging markets behave in a different way from those of developed countries. Theory of macro-economics or technical analysis cannot be applied without customization. I’d wish somebody would write about this topic, beside Nam Le at Cofieu

2. The career of a Financial Analyst, especially in Fund Management, Banking and Securities

…Because this is my chosen career path.

I do read Jason Vu’s and Khoa Pham’s blogs regularly though.

How about you? What is your answer to the question?

Viewzi

Searchme

Dear Prudential PR Representative,

First of all, please allow me to make it clear that my family and I have been using some Prudential’s products in the last few years decades and we have been happy with Prudential’s service quality so far.

I also appreciate your recent efforts to reach me and other bloggers on Yahoo! 360 platform.

However, I wonder if you would have more luck with me with some other approaches?

Some reasons why your approach is not very effective:

1. Mass communication is not the way to go. Basically it’s like a job applicant who write one cover letter to multiple prospective employers without changing a single word.
2. Some bloggers including me don’t expect comments just for the sake of words on the page.
3. It looks like you’re just there to “take” what you can.
4. It looks like you’re going after quantity rather than quality opportunities.

If you segment me a professional working in the foreign sector which I am, kindly arrange a business appointment after business hours.

If you segment me a blogger which I am, please accept my suggestion to read Darren Rowse’s 21 tips on PR campaigns on blogs.

I’m looking forward to another opportunity of collaboration.

Best Regards,
TaiTran
www.taitran.com

1. Portfolio Management

2. Market Watch

3. Listed Stock Watch

Source: http://www.tuoitre.com.vn/Tianyon/Index.aspx?ArticleID=275507&ChannelID=16

TaiTran’s comments to come soon…