Technology As Innovator

Facebook

73.5 million users and growing fastest

What I like about it

1. Mini-Feed is useful in seeing a quick snapshot on the latest happenings within your network without going to several sites to check.
2. The ability to supply how you know a person.
3. Nice applications. Approximately 10% of Facebook applications I’ve tried are interesting and useful while others are not as good.

I think these can be improved

1. Fixed 600 width and non-resizable
2. Non-customizable design
3. No built-in blogging functionality. Blogging can be done with applications such as Live Blog, but we don’t normally depend on addons for such important values like blogs.
4. Tight security: profile only viewable by friends. How do you determine if a profile is your friend or not just by looking at the screen name which can be different from the real name?
5. One account can only join no more than 200 groups. Unlimited is preferred.

Orkut

24.6 million users

What I like about it

1. Simple design, Google philosophy after all
2. Extensible width
3. Ad-free

I think these can be improved

1. Name. Honestly speaking, the Turkish name “Orkut” is very unfamiliar. Just a remark, as the brand name is not supposed to change
2. Very few, if any, extensions

Yahoo! Mash

What I like about it

1. Wider width
2. Larger font
3. Allows profiles to be updated by friends
4. Mini-feed is also supplied

I think these can be improved

1. Check boxes to select friends to add should be provided
2. More group levels
3. Informal language. I am especially not easy with the word “fugly”
4. Profile with non-removable fields such as “What’s most likely playing on my iPod”… Excuse me, can I NOT have an iPod?

MySpace

107 million users. The currently largest site

What I like about it

1. Integrated all-in-one solution that includes social networking, blogging, mail, favorites, forum, movies, events, media

I think these can be improved

1. Inconsistent design
2. Music landing page
3. Spam, including spam invitations, protection
4. Tons of ads

Other notable networking sites

Name	Focus	Number of users (in million)	Comments
Windows Live Spaces	Blogging	120	Really eye-catching glossy design. Powerful blogging support. Try new Microsoft experience!
hi5	General	50	An issue: the letter ‘5′ creates this word “hị” in Vietnamese. hi5 is still nice anyway
bebo	Schools & alumni	34	Nice and neat
friendster	General	50	Friendster is getting old. It needs more innovation.
imeem	Media: Music, Video	16	Possibly the best media site currently. Nice design and convenient upload process. Support tagging
LinkedIn	Business	15	Very professional for business networking purpose
Last.fm	Music	15	Attractive design, especially the logo. However, radio alone is not that fascinating. They could use more of music sharing
Xanga	Blogging	40	The ad on top is a huge barrier to this site’s design. Usability is a little messy

Read more

Wikipedia, List of social networking websites

Mashable, Facebook Hammers MySpace on Almost All Key Features

Techcrunch, Facebook platform

American Class Divisions

Nerdlifestyle, Media restrictions

My choice

Facebook to keep in touch with international friends and English-speaking communities

Yahoo! Mash. Many young Vietnamese users rely on Yahoo! services

for socially musical networking

How about you?

Share your experience here…

Which site do you like best? What you wish your site had offered?

Dear

I love your wonderful service.

But I’ll love yours even more if you can make it quicker and clearer for me to upload videos.

1. Uploading Process

Problem: uploading process takes 2 steps

Solution: merge these 2 steps into one single page

Advantage: save users one screen load

2. Required field indicator

Problem: no indicator to distinguish required fields

Solution: put an asterisk beside each required field

Advantage: avoid confusion for users

3. Error message

Problem: very general and confusing “Please double-check your video title”.

Solution: “Title is required”

Advantage: avoid confusion of users

Other Youtube users, what do you think of my suggestions? Please share your experience in the comments…

Thanks a lot

Recap of new features

Though you might have experienced them already. I’ll make a quick recap when the new Yahoo! Mail turns official and becomes default.

New hot keys

Although Yahoo! Mail classic already provided hot keys and prompts, new Yahoo! Mail makes them shorter thus more memorable.

Tabs

Tabs come into place. Now we have different tabs for each of our task, whether it is reading different messages or composing different letters.

Integrated RSS reader

It allows you to forward a post as an email.

Unlimited Storage

I still remembered the time when we used to have only 4Mb per account. It was only 4 years ago. Time flies any now we have more and more and more storage due to cheaper hardware.

In 2007, storage is no longer a big concern of users. At the time of this post, Hotmail already offers 5Gb, Gmail will be offering 4Gb. Nevertheless, unlimited is always nice.

 

 

Integrated Yahoo! Messenger chat

Though basic, it comes in handy.

SMS Messaging

It currently works for U.S., India, Philippines and Canadian mobile numbers.

More effective spam-filters

It’s hard to estimate how effective it is, but it works well on my account.

Built-in Context Menu

Context Menu refers to a menu that appears when you right-click on a Graphical User Interface element.

Hint: in some browsers, the browser’s Context Menu is displayed together with Yahoo! Mail Context Menu and is of higher priority. To use Yahoo! Mail Context Menu, hit “Esc” once.

What I wish Yahoo! had offered

• Forwarding
  It’s only available with Yahoo! Plus. Gmail offers forwarding for their free account. The strategy is Yahoo! and Google is different so I have to learn to live with it.
• POP3
  Also available with Yahoo! Plus

How I use different email services

I tried around 40 free email services in 2003. I now narrow down to one Yahoo! Mail, one Gmail, one Hotmail and some email accounts on my professional website taitran.com

1. Yahoo! Mail and other Yahoo! services such 360 are for staying in touch with my personal networks
2. Gmail is for more professional connections such as organizations, societies
3. The Hotmail account is more exploring Microsoft Live, MSN and Hotmail
4. My professional email at taitran dot com is for occasions when branding is really important

Which email services do you use? Do you use different email services for different purpose?