Spotify has arrived in the US! Twitter was all abuzz when the announcement came, and lots of my friends jumped on board as soon as they could scrounge up invites. I was excited to sign up too, but then I procrastinated. And then procrastinated some more.

For one thing, I have a pretty big collection of music I’ve purchased over the years, and when you consider that, say, 500 years ago, many people on the planet had the opportunity to listen to music only a few times during their lives, maybe I should just be satisfied with what I already have. But it seems I’m not, because in addition to my own music collection, I use Pandora, and I subscribe to eMusic.

I like the “lean-back” experience of Pandora. I don’t have to make many decisions, and it often introduces me to great new music – which I then add to my wish list on eMusic.

That’s where the problem starts for me.

My eMusic wish list has become absurdly huge, and for $11.99 a month I can download about three albums (which is much better than iTunes or Amazon). The problem is, I’ve come to dread my “refresh” date, because I know I’ll be overwhelmed not only by what’s already in my wish list, but what’s available to me in the rest of the eMusic catalog. More than once I’ve left without downloading anything, telling myself I’ll come back when I feel more inspired or when I have more time to browse. More than once I’ve failed to come back, forfeiting my monthly fee (until recently, the policy was use it or lose it).

Based on my experience with eMusic, I hesitate to sign up for yet more music to choose from. But the problem is not just about choosing what to listen to; there’s also the problem of choosing which music service to sign up for.

There’s Spotify now, but there are also Spotify’s competitors – most notably Rdio and Grooveshark, but also Rhapsody, the old incumbent, Last.fm, and many more. I’ve read five or six blog posts comparing these services to each other, and honestly I still feel like I don’t know what the differences are, or what makes any one of them better than the others.

I think it boils down to this: People prefer Rdio’s UI (especially the mobile app). Spotify has a (slightly?) bigger selection (and better sharing features?). Grooveshark, as a crowdsourced service, suffers from inconsistent song naming and questionable licensing (the latter of which puts them at risk of being shut down). Also, they don’t have a mobile app. Last.fm and Rhapsody are fine services that just have the misfortune of being yesterday’s news.

This of course is a uniquely first-world problem, which lies in the psychological realm of what is lately being called “The Paradox of Choice.” Psychologist Barry Schwartz, author of the book bearing this title breaks it down into several sub-problems – two of which are relevant here:

• Choice and Happiness – Basically an over-abundance of choice leads to depression. One study showed, for example, that people at chocolate-tasting events enjoyed themselves much more when they were given a smaller selection of chocolates to choose from.
• Missed Opportunities - I know I’m not going to pay for eMusic, Spotify and Rdio, but I resist committing to any of them because I’m afraid of what I’ll forever miss from the others.

This all reminds me of the first time I saw one of those Internet-connected digital jukeboxes in a bar – the ones that will fetch almost any song you can think of. I was waiting my turn behind a guy who’d just put his money in it, and he was taking forever. Come on come on come on, I was saying in my head, until he finally finished making his picks. Then it was my turn, and I was completely flummoxed. Eventually I think I gave up.

There’s a bar in San Francisco called Lucky 13 that’s famous for its jukebox. It’s a wonderfully-curated selection of great punk music, plus a few all-time classics and a nod to pop. It’s easy to choose a great set in the Lucky 13 jukebox.

Carefully considered limits can be a good thing.

Here’s what I’m gonna do. I’m going to cancel my eMusic, because choosing three albums a month out of their massive catalog is the most acute problem in this mix. Then, I’m going to sign up for Rdio, not because I’m certain it’s better than Spotify, but because my friend Marisol works there.

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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?

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

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3. twitter for curmudgeons and noobs

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.

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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.

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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.”

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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.

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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).

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