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, now 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.

The Context

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?

They obmitted the list of Limited Profile.

For your school, you can choose who (Undergrad, Grads, Alumni, Faculty or Staff) belong to a Network can see your profile.

You can select exactly which friends you want to share your Status, Photo Tag, Video Tag, Online Status, Wall, Education Info and Work Info

Privacy now can be set when uploading Photos and Videos too.

You can put friends in Lists when adding them.

When migrating data from the old function to the new function, some settings might need update. You may want to do so immediately.