user agent

Today I walked down to Cafe Dolci to grab a banh mi (I always order  a combo of grilled pork and paté incidentally), and there was a guy inside the place taking pictures. Cafe Dolci is busy at lunchtime and only has room inside for one person, so while the photographer and his tripod monopolized the place for a few minutes, a gathering throng of customers milled around outside. At one point, one of them asked the photographer, “What are you taking pictures for?”

His answer: “Google Maps.”

With a fisheye lens, he took pictures from every angle, to be “stitched together” later for what I can only guess will be a kind of Google Maps twist on Amazon’s “search inside this book.” Maybe this is some kind of payback for Yelp’s recent cold feet at the marriage altar. You don’t jilt the Google.

In other news from our robot overlords, a Finn Labs van and a Google Street View car captured pictures of each other yesterday:

So, don’t be surprised if someone from Google knocks on your door and tells you he’s there to take pictures of your bathroom. After that, maybe Google Maps of your internal organs?

I suppose I could create a bridge between them, but sometimes it’s fun to just watch.

After holding out for a couple of years, I’ve become a full-on twitter convert. I wasn’t avoiding twitter on principle or anything. I just couldn’t understand why twitter was remotely interesting to anyone, or what it could possibly add to my life. Now that I’ve been on board for little while, I don’t get hung up on questions about twitter’s mainstream-ness, cultural significance or cognitive side effects. I’m simply exploring, and adopting the bits I find useful.

Recently, a few friends of mine have started twittering, and plenty others dismiss twitter like I once did. So – for the noobs who’ve been asking me for it – I thought I would write about some of the ways I use twitter, and – for the curmudgeons who have not asked – I’ll start with a bit about why…

I use twitter to…

Keep tabs on real-life friends – Many of my friends are married, or live far away, or they’re busy people like me. In short, I don’t get to see them as often as I want, and even with email, communication tends to lapse. A fair number of them use twitter, and I actually enjoy hearing about the small droll peaks of their day-to-day lives – from random observations to pithy opinions to parenting foibles.

Keep tabs on people I admire – For example, I like to read Nicholas Kristof’s column in the New York Times. I admire his perspective and efforts on behalf of places like Darfur. But he’s also on twitter, posting from the field about things as he experiences them. This kind of unfiltered stuff can be really compelling, depending on the source.

Get real-time information – A couple weeks ago a helicopter was circling above downtown San Francisco, near my office. It appeared to be trying to land on the roof of a nearby building. This went on for what seemed like hours. Medevac? A quick search revealed a consensus among twitterers that it was a TV shoot for Monk. Google can’t do this. And when US Airways flight 1549 landed in the Hudson, I was on my lunch break from work. I happened to check my twitter feed, and I heard about the dramatic crash landing there first. A variety of witness reports were rolling in in real time – many with cell-phone pictures. This isn’t a substitute for actual journalism, but it provides an immediacy and a texture that complements it.

Follow my favorite blogs and news outlets – Some of my favorite blogs are on twitter, so instead of going to www.npr.com/money in my browser to read the Planet Money blog (and then doing the same for every other blog I like to read), I used to open up Google Reader a few times a day to scan the latest headlines across all my favorite sources. But now that some of my favorite blogs are on twitter, their headlines and more are pushed to me in my twitter feed. I don’t have to go anywhere unless there’s a story I actually want to read.

Discover new and interesting things – As with any venue where you congregate and chat with like-minded people, my twitter friends and their friends talk about the books and articles they’re reading, the music they’re listening to, the products they use, the shows they watch, etc. And when they tweet about these things, they often include links.

Update my Facebook status – I like the simplicity of twitter, and I prefer it to Facebook for doing all the things I mentioned above. More of my friends are on Facebook than twitter, however, so I still use both. Instead of updating my status in both places, I use this little trick to synchronize my Facebook status with my twitter updates.

What is twitter?

I was going to use the last bit of this post to talk about the ways I use various twitter features and tools, but I’ve just had a couple people ask me to explain the basic concept of twitter to them, so I’ll save the “how” for a subsequent post.

Microblogging – Twitter is often referred to as a “microblogging” platform. If a blog represents an easy way for anyone to post stuff on the web, then a microblog is simply a blog that limits the amount you can post at any one time. With twitter, the limit is 140 characters.

The basics – You can read what any person is saying on twitter by going to www.twitter.com/username (where “username” is the person whose updates you want to read. For example, I’m metapede). You can also use twitter search to see what people on twitter have been saying about a particular topic over the last couple of months or so (it doesn’t save anything older than that). Finally, you can see what everyone is saying on twitter by checking out the public timeline.

Following – This is really the heart of how twitter works. Once you sign up for your own twitter account, you can “follow” anyone whose updates you want to read, without their permission – as long as their account is not private. They will receive an email letting them know you are now following them. If they reciprocate, you will get an email too. This way, you always know who’s following you and reading your updates. When you visit someone’s page on twitter, you can see a list of their followers, as well as the people they are following.

This is where twitter is fundamentally different from a social network like Facebook. On Facebook, relationships are two-way things. You request to add someone as a friend, and they need to accept your request before you can see each other’s activity. On twitter, however, relationships can be asynchronous. For example, I can follow Times columnist Nicholas Kristof – along with thousands of other people who enjoy his column – but he doesn’t have to follow everyone back.

Privacy – You can keep your twitter account private, which means people can’t read your updates when they visit your page. They have to request to follow you, and you have to approve them. Your updates also won’t show up in twitter search if your account is private.

Posting updates – Once you’re signed up, you can post updates by going to twitter.com and typing in the box at the top of the page. You can also make updates by text message, once you enable this feature in your twitter settings, under “Devices.” There are also twitter apps for iPhone and other devices, plus a variety of browser plugins and desktop apps. As for myself, I rarely visit twitter.com, opting instead to use the TwitterFon app on my iPhone.

My last post, “How to win at Yelp: a guide for businesses” was inspired by the recent controversies surrounding Yelp, and the gist of the post is just what it sounds like. However, I think there are some things Yelp can – and should – do to address allegations of fraud and extortion (beyond a predictable blog post by the CEO).

So here’s my advice for Yelp…

#1. Reveal the “secret algorithms” that determine the order in which reviews appear. This will eliminate any questions about whether your staff can manipulate things. Your algorithms aren’t your differentiator, your special sauce or your value proposition. Being transparent about them won’t hurt you.

#2. Institute a clear and explicit code of conduct for your sales team and seriously investigate complaints about specific sales people. You cannot plausibly deny all the reports of overly-aggressive Yelp sales agents, questionable promises and veiled threats. So take the allegations seriously, and demonstrate that you are taking measures to prevent this kind of thing from happening in the future.

#3. Prohibit employees from writing reviews. I know this one won’t go over well, but a perceived conflict of interest is a real one. “Community first, consumers second and businesses third” is fine, but the fact that your revenue comes from businesses puts them first in a way. Bottom line: Real reviews by “real people” shouldn’t include Yelp employees.

#4. Don’t “automatically” remove reviews – not permanently anyway. Your system should be able to flag reviews and nothing more. It should take a person to permanently remove a review from the site, and when it happens, you need to notify both the reviewer and the business and let them know exactly why it was removed. The reason should correlate to specific violations of one or more terms of service.

#5. Enlist help. The previous piece of advice would mean more work for you. Significantly more. And you’re already having trouble finding your way to profitability. So I suggest you create a panel of “super users” (from the pool of Yelp Elites perhaps) whose job is to validate all flagged reviews to determine whether to take them down or leave them.

That’s it. Thanks for listening.

We love you Yelp, but we need to know we can trust you.

Last week, the East Bay Express published a lengthy story accusing Yelp of extortion. Among other things, the article charges Yelp of offering to take down negative reviews of businesses who agree to become “sponsors” and pay for advertising on the site. It’s not the first time Yelp has been the focus of controversy.

Last month, a Bay Area chiropractor sued a Yelper for defamation after the user posted a negative review of his business. Just a week later, a Bay Area dentist filed a lawsuit against a couple who posted a review on Yelp criticizing her treatment of their son. Then she filed a second lawsuit against Yelp itself, after the company refused to take down the review.

The East Bay Express article paints a picture of business owners who are terrified of Yelp’s enormous power, and it’s true that just one terrible review by a credible local can be like a tactical nuke. It’s also inevitable that a certain amount of fraud takes place on Yelp in the form of fake reviews – negative reviews written by competitors as well as raves written by businesses about themselves.

And I see a lot of one-star reviews that follow this template: “I’ve always had really great experiences at this restaurant… except this one time when something slightly annoying happened.” People don’t pull their punches when they write things on the Interwebs, and I feel bad for businesses when I see them being completely bashed for really minor infractions.

So a certain amount of fear and suspicion are justified. But it’s also clear that too many business owners have no idea how to handle negative reviews. When the dentist, Yvonne Wong, was asked whether she attempted to contact the couple who wrote the negative review before deciding to sue them, she said it never occurred to her to do so: “I would be very upset and would not know what to say to them.”

This is just bad customer relations, which brings me to my advice for businesses on how to handle any mud flung at them by way of Yelp. It’s super simple…

#1: Don’t Suck. Just accept the new world order, where customers are powerful. When you’re serving a customer, never forget the fact that they can Yelp, tweet, post on Facebook, etc. and know that the word will spread from there. It will be shared, and it will be Googled.

OK, I understand that no business can be perfect all the time, and customers can be downright unreasonable. So what should businesses do when someone bashes them, justified or not?

#2 Apologize. Even if you think you’re right, apologize. That’s it. Or… that should be it. But businesses – like people – are really bad at apologizing. Fortunately Seth Godin posted this very helpful guide that ranks different kinds of apologies on a 1-10 scale. Hint: Everything below a 9 is not a real apology.

And now my last piece of advice…

#3 Launch a preemptive strike. You have a website, right? If you don’t, then… um… do you know it’s 2008? Assuming you do though, then start a blog, get a twitter account and get naked. As in, transparent. You will be surprised at the good will you will create, and the kind of relationship you will develop with your community if you put yourself out there in an honest and straightforward way.

That’s it.

But I have some advice for Yelp too… in my next post.

UPDATE: I forgot to add that talking to each other worked for the Yelper (Christopher Norberg) who was sued by the chiropractor, and it sounds like they could have avoided mediation altogether:

Norberg replaced his post on Biegel’s Yelp page with an apology that reads, “A misunderstanding between both parties led us to act out of hand. I chose to ignore Dr. Biegel’s initial request to discuss my posting. In hindsight, I should have remained open to his concerns. Both Dr. Biegel and I strongly believe in a person’s right to express their opinions in a public forum.”

I received my weekly BayCHI job bank email today, which has always contained at least twenty or thirty postings.  Today, however, it was so thin that I mistook the email for some other kind of announcement, and I scrolled right past the one(!) job posting it contained:

Senior User Experience Designer at H&R Block – Cambridge, MA

One job posting in the BayCHI job bank, and it’s not even a Bay Area job. Despite the economy melting down, the market for User Experience peeps has been blessedly unscathed, but I haven’t seen the BayCHI job list this thin since the great dotcom bust of ‘01.

Here we go again folks.

On many occasions and even in a recent post, I’ve said that I just don’t get twitter. I was certain I didn’t want to tune in to the minutiae of my friends’ lives, and I was not interested in sharing mine. A few short weeks later, I’ve totally changed my tune, and I can say that twitter is now one of my favorite games. Yes, that’s what I said.

I like the strange blend of personal and professional I find on twitter at any given moment, and in this respect, twitter is somewhat unique. Blogs and other content and publishing vehicles (like magazines or television shows) do much better when they specialize – when they focus solely on, say, beer or esoteric music or bespoke tailoring. Even when we consume blogs, we tend to organize them – within RSS readers – into genres and categories. Other types of user-generated content – I’m thinking of forums and discussion boards (and Gmail) – are organized into threads.

But the beauty of twitter is that it’s neither specialized nor organized. At any given moment in the twitter stream from my friends, I might see a quirky observation… next to a plea for support… next to a bit of self-promotion… and so on. Even the stream of tweets from any individual friend will span all these flavors and more over the course of a day or two.

This variety gives twitter a game-like quality in the sense that there’s always the possibility (but never a guarantee) of surprise and delight – a textbook example of a random reward schedule. This is a well-known concept in gambling and game design (as discussed here, here and here), and it’s what keeps people coming back for more. Basically, there are a few different “schedules” a game or other activity can apply in the way it rewards players:

• Fixed interval: Reward players every X minutes/seconds
• Variable interval: Randomly reward players, but with an average interval of X minutes/seconds
• Fixed ratio: Reward players after every X responses
• Variable ratio: Randomly reward players, but with an average trigger of X responses

As you can see from this graph, the variable ratio schedule is by far the most effective:

When it comes to simply consuming the stream of tweets, you could argue that twitter applies either (or both) of the variable schedules, but when you start to interact with the stream it’s clearly variable ratio. I’m officially hooked.

And thanks to TwitterFon, twitter is with me all the time. I’ve become compulsive about checking it. Incidentally, there are numerous twitter apps for iPhone, but none is as easy on the eyes or as fun to use as TwitterFon. And recently, when the app was crashing (due to a JSON parsing issue on twitter), the makers of the app issued freequent updates on their blog and via @twitterfon until it was fixed.

So I’ve gone from flirting to the first strains of a romance. It’s not a full-blown affair yet, because there are so many ways to use twitter, and I’m only scratching the surface. I tweet a couple times a day at most, which makes me a kind of twitter voyeur I suppose. I resolve to start tweeting more, although I never want to be as noisy as @guykawasaki (who I eventually stopped following because he posted almost as much as all my other followees combined) or @Scobleizer. And there are a lot of third-party twitter tools and add-ons I’m not using.

The only fancy thing I’ve done with it is to use twitterfeed to tweet my blog posts automatically (which might be how you got here).

The somewhat agonizing ritual of sending holiday cards has been my way of keeping long-time and distant friends up-to-date on my life, and each year I feel a twinge of regret that a whole year has gone by without any other communication with many (most, really) of them.

Enter Facebook. Facebook hasn’t replaced my holiday card ritual by any stretch, but it’s changed the dynamic. Disrupted it. A number of people on my holiday card list are also my friends on Facebook of course, and so I can fairly assume these people are already up-to-date on my life. But outside that circle is where things get weird.

There are a number of people on my holiday card list who are not on Facebook and aren’t ever likely to be. Some of these people are really important to me – people I love and admire – but because of distance (physical and temporal), I don’t have much contact with them. In many cases, only once a year, via my holiday card.

By the same token, I have lots of “friends” on Facebook who aren’t on my holiday card list – people I once worked with, for example, but also people I knew in high school, siblings of childhood friends, random friends-of-friends, etc. By virtue of Facebook, these people are more up-to-date on certain aspects of my life than some of my really good friends.

The point here is that it’s strange that so many people who are not important enough to me to warrant a holiday card are so up to date on my both my personal and professional life (strangely blended, thanks to Facebook and Twitter), while people I love and admire deeply only get a thin mass-mailing from me once a year.

Part of me wishes that all my friends would just join Facebook already, so I could just… I don’t know… “deck the halls” with them or “throw a snowball” at them and be done with it. The other part of me longs for the slow world that existed before all this stuff, when we’d exchange nice handwritten greetings with the people we love.

For the last couple of months, I’ve been working for Kyte (more on that in a future post), and yesterday we got a nice shout out from backstage at the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, highlighting Kyte’s mobile streaming capabilities. Ever the evangelist, Arianna was pressing Jon Stewart on the question of blogging – specifically, why doesn’t Stewart blog?

His knee-jerk answer was that he has a television show – one that airs daily – that provides an ample outlet for his thoughts. “I don’t have any extra thoughts,” he says.

Of course Stewart’s answer doesn’t satisfy Arianna, and I’m sure she’s right in the sense that Stewart’s fans would eagerly devour all his extra thoughts, spontaneous backstage antics and the rest of the “dreck” (as he refers to it later on the show, with Arianna as his guest).

On the other hand, I understand how someone who writes all day every day for his show would have no energy left over for blogging.

At one point Stewart notices the member of Huffington’s crew using the Nokia N95 8GB to capture the exchange on video, and the conversation turns briefly to online video and “embedding.” Then web analytics, and when Arianna mentions Nielsen ratings, Jon Stewart recognizes commmon ground and asks, “are you sure you’re not TV?”

Here’s Arianna on the actual show: