YouTube unveils new UX(User Experience) redesign
Very subtle, YouTube. I almost didn’t even notice. While I was clicking around, watching videos today on my YouTubes, I was oblivious to the fact that the site had undergone a total UI makeover. To start things off, the design is clean(er). In comparison to earlier designs, the new design feels sparse (in a good way). New features and other changes abound. YouTube is even kind enough to include a tour of the new layout, which highlights some really cool new features. I’ve boiled down the tour to the items I found intriguing.
User/Subscribe buttons
YouTube has grouped the name of the uploader together with a drop-down select box. Clicking the uploader’s name reveals a nice sliding panel of their other uploaded videos with thumbnails (similar to a lightweight coverflow-style widge). This technology was previously available elsewhere (the uploader’s channel page, if I remember correctly), but now feels more integrated and is more easily accesible. The subscribe button has also been moved right next to the user’s name and upload count.
Improved, more accessible analytics
I am not a YouTube publisher, and I had not really noticed an analytics section for viewers showing stats about videos being watched, but I couldn’t miss them this time. The View Count statistic, when clicked, will expose a full run-down of viewing activity for the video including geographic breakdown among other stats. It seems that some data are not available for every video (the @Scobleizer video in the screenshots had full stats, but a random Jimmy Kimmel video only had “honors” like Most Viewed this Week, Most Favorited, Most X…). Interesting stuff.
Big Changes to Ratings
In a change to a long-standing practice of using 5-star reviews, YouTube has decided to move forward with a like/dislike model already popularized by services like Facebook. In an earlier blog post, YouTube stated that 5-star ratings were becoming less and less useful for effectively recommending content. The post goes on to explain that users often will simply give everything 5 stars or nothing most of the time. Like/Dislike buttons will engage more users via its simplicity and help drive relevancy when combined other social criteria.
Share via Twitter, Facebook
Finally (and I’ve only covered the new features that interest me — there are probably many more gems to uncover), YouTube has enabled Twitter and Facebook sharing. Not a new feature, but it is simpler and feels a little smoother. Sharing was mostly painless. I had to type my credentials into Facebook Connect and a Twitter Authorization page but made it through unscathed. They don’t yet feel tightly integrated, but I’m sure with feedback and help they’ll be ready when the moment comes. Social glue is not yet a commodity.
Almost missed it
When combined with each other, these are big changes that will improve the user experience for YouTube users. The addition of analytics might help people decide whether a video might be valuable to them before they watch it, and cleaning things up makes it much easer to find and use new features. I expect we’ll hear about this from other sources as well, but remember you heard it here first.
Joel
Philip K. Dick – Letter regarding Blade Runner
Came across this tremendously rewarding link courtesy of News.YCombinator:
http://www.philipkdick.com/new_letters-laddcompany.html
Twitter.com Adds location to tweets – implications for realtime
Twitter today released new location features to the http://twitter.com website, enabling users to share their current location when posting new tweets. I have not confirmed whether this feature has been enabled for all users, but I have gathered some screenshots to share:
This new feature set will finally enable other location-based services to rely on Twitter as an authoritative location source. Most Twitter clients already natively support location-enabled tweets, with Twitter.com the last one to the party. I can almost hear the collective “Huzzah!” of API users around the world, and the collective “Now what?!?” of third-party Twitter client app developers. Don’t worry guys, Twitter.com has it’s place, and so do client apps.
The addition of location also opens up a new set of problems as far as privacy, safety, and legality are concerned. Twitter has provided some About information on their Support Forums that offers to answer some of the more asked questions such as:
- Safe Tweeting with your Location
- Tweet with your location FAQ
- What location information is displayed? (exact location or place)
- Why do I see a pin-pointed exact location for some Tweets but only general vicinity (neighborhood or city) for others? (Twitter can display place, coords or both)
- What location does Twitter store? (as long as the Tweet exists, or until location history is cleared)
- Which browsers support Tweeting with location (Firefox 3.5 and Chrome, older FF and IE require Gears)
The new feature also highlights limitations in older browser technology such as IE7, which does not support location sharing by default.
In fact, most Firefox users may not even be aware that the latest versions of FF (3.5 and up?) support location services. By using built-in browser features, Twitter has effectively voted for which browsers are preferred Twitter platforms. Expect to see some fallout from IE proponents over this.
Until the tweets start coming in, we can’t know for sure how the developer community, users themselves or the tech journalists will respond to this development. It’s going to be an exciting night on Twitter for sure, as the prospects of a definitive location provider emerge as new product ideas, mashups and new features for existing third-party services. Keep your eyes open people, it’s all happening (I promise that will be the last time I use that tired phrase, unless there’s some Twitter campaign to bring it back!).
If you like the story, show the RT love, or send it to your favorite tech blog as a tip or submission. Right now I’m just writing for myself and the RealTime community (no, that’s not a journal, just social media) but am looking for ways to increase my engagement in the larger community via other channels. If you have questions or want to know more about me, follow me on twitter (http://twitter.com/joelgibby) and send a mention my way. I’m pretty good about getting back in a hurry. (BTW: this article was posted 43 minutes after I realized the feature was enabled. 
Screenshots etc. were all taken within that time period. I also took 2 phone calls during writing, so you’ll have to forgive the lag!)
JoelGibby
Twitter.com might begin using Bit.ly to shorten URLs – Twitter journalism
Evan Williams, Twitter Founder and CEO
Strange coincidences are not irony. So don’t say that this is ironic. It’s just a strange coincidence: @ev (Twitter Co-Founder and CEO Evan Willams) posts a tweet that he is proud of his vast team of genius candidates:
“@ev Super happy about the collection of people we’ve managed to assemble at Twitter.”
and I try to link him to my blog post praising Twitter’s growing focus on scalability:
“@JoelGibby You might enjoy this then:http://joelgibby.net/2010/03/02/twitter-developer-announces-advanced-people-search-upgrades-ahead-of-sxsw2010/”
Only, my tweet does not show up on Twitter.com as I typed. No. Instead I see:
“@joelgibby @ev You might enjoy this then:http://bit.ly/djfBoi“
I will preface the rest of this post thusly:
When I posted the link to @ev, I *did* see the link change to a bit.ly link. I won’t speculate on what Twitter is releasing, but the rest of the post is written from my perspective as a user seeing a new feature for the first time. Twitter made no announcement of any integration with bit.ly NOR have any Twitter employees openly or otherwise blogged (at least with me or as far as I know) about such features. The commentary is invaluable however and I feel it needs to be shared rather than be relegated to the “unpublished” bin. Just imagine that “has” is changed to “may” etc.
It’s great coming across new features before anyone else. It gives us (well, not me really, you) writers a chance to hustle up some copy and get it out on the realtime before anyone else has a chance to think about what just happened. It takes folks by surprise, but in a way that makes them grin (maybe even smirk a little) and say, “Twitter, you sly dogs!”
Twitter has been releasing news in unconventional ways lately, from allowing their dev team to hint at future enhancements, to making announcements via Twitter in favor of drafting “traditional” press releases. Maybe they are being modest about the iterational changes their crack team of developers are implementing, and feel it’s not front-page material. Maybe they are right.
The change in communication mode is the real story. Why put out a press release that will simply be syndicated by the big names in online and print media, but never be read or analyzed? The realtime web is afroth with budding journalists (ahem.) who would love to know EXACTLY what is going on in their favorite companies. Traditional media (and even larger blogs in some cases) don’t have time or resources to devote to every feature enhancement that Twitter makes, let alone that brand new startup that not many have heard of but has a base of rabid fans tweeting their name to the rooftops. The realtime web does however, and it’s got talent in spades.
Back to the (possible) news item: Twitter has not responded to requests for comment on the possible change. All I know right now is what I saw. And may I say: I like.
Expect to see much more of this style of journalism (quickly written, hardly edited, factual and with commentary) in the very near future. Micro-news is a new area ripe for talent. Let’s see what you got.
Joel
LucyPhone.com: Never wait on hold again.
A new tool to save time
LucyPhone knows your pain. Waiting on hold sucks. You are spending precious time listening to some of the world’s worst. Music. Ever. Seconds seem like minutes, and minutes seem like an eternity. You can never get that time back. Ever. You don’t have to wait any more though.
Some real smooth cats
LucyPhone is a new web telephony service launched by brothers Mike and Tom Oristan at Decogram. Both are Stanford grads with very impressive bios over at the Decogram site. Sharpening their business and software development skills at private companies for the last 15 years has given them the chops to succeed.
How they do that
LucyPhone wants change the way we make contact with businesses by waiting on hold for you. Here’s how the system works: Go to LucyPhone.com, search for a company by name or phone number (a stylish and smooth dynamic interface makes the task a pleasure). Enter the phone number you wish to make the call from and click “Start.” LucyPhone will call you, wait for you to answer, then explain how to use the service
Here’s what a call would sound like:
It’s Lucy. I’ll see if we can get thses guys on the line. Press one to be connected
BEEP
Now Connecting. Go ahead and make whatever selections you want; as you know, you can drop off the call by pressing star star at any time. Then I’ll reconnect you when someone comes on the line.
You make any menu selections required to get to the phone queue desired; for example: “Press one for sales or two for customer service.” Once you hear the hold music, press star, star and LucyPhone will disconnect your end of the call. The call status is displayed on their beautiful website, and is updated in realtime with call duration and hold duration counters. A “Start Over” and “Redial” button obviously let you go back to the beginning and select a new business or redial the last dialed number.
How was it
I tested the service with the notorious Dell Customer Service hotline and the product worked exactly as advertised. I was impressed with the speed and fluidness of the web interface and the phone experience. Call quality was great and there was no noticeable lag when speaking with the agent. By keeping it simple, LucyPhone is garaunteed to become a go-to for connected folks wanting to save some time in their day. For more information, check them out:
http://www.lucyphone.com/how_it_works
http://www.twitter.com/lucyphone
Twitter developer announces advanced people search upgrades ahead of SXSW2010
Announcement via Twitter
Alex Payne, a developer @Twitter announced today via tweet that work has been completed on a project to enhance the scalability, resiliency and quality of people search results at Twitter. While the engineer tried to downplay the announcement, the impact could be huge for how people find each other on Twitter. I’m going on a hunch, but I am betting that Twitter made the changes in advance of a looming swarm or location-crazed socialites that will be descnding upon Austin TX in just a few days.
SXSW is coming up. Twitter counting on not going down
Sidestepping all the hype surrounding the upcoming festival, most, if not all the attendees are avid Twitter users following hundreds and thousands of other users. What do twitter users do when they drink? Well, besides have sex? They tweet. And tweet. And look up followers. And tweet. The tweeting alone has been known to bring the service down before (hello @FailWhale!) but what about people search? I asked the developers and engineers and have not had a comment back yet, but I would wager again that if it is a priority at Twitter, it has to do with reliability and uptime. These guys are serious about it now.
Web app scalability experts
If you don’t run in global web domination circles, you’re unaware thatAlex Payne (who also caught some heat for a cryptic tweet that could mean HUGE things for the Twitter.com web interface) is also the author of Programming Scala (O’Reilly):
With this book, you’ll discover why Scala is ideal for highly scalable, component-based applications that support concurrency and distribution.
Six months in the making, the upgrades are all behind the scenes according to Evan Weaver, infrastructure team manager for Twitter:
@joelgibby The changes are all behind the scenes. It’s been like a six-month project, I think. We are very proud.
Alex shared that he had been working with Steve Jenson on the project for some time and that the:
Thing I’ve been working on with @stevej for a while is now out to 100% of users: highly scalable, slightly better quality people search!
He also shared:
Lots of room for improvement in people search quality, but our main goal of making it hella shared/replicated was accomplished with GUSTO.
Indeed.
Social information sharing – better than a press release?
Twitter has been vibing quite hard on it’s own sidechannels with no doubt triple-vetted tweets from developers hinting at upcoming features along with announcements of enhancements to twitter profiles and some new partnerships. This post was different though, because he announced that it is fully rolled out now. Before making his announcement, he retweeted @evan (Evan Weaver, infrastructure team manager @Twitter), who said “scalable people search is scalable.” We sure hope so.
Scaling to keep pace with realtime
Building scalable infrastructure is key in Twitter keeping the talking stick in the realtime web conversation. As social sites like Twitter grow by the thousands and millions of users uptime becomes increasingly critical as those users begin to rely on the service for everyday convenience connections like meeting friends for drinks or getting advice on local food carts, or for gathering life-saving information (via Mashable) on friends or family who may be in harm’s way. Remember the June 2009 Iranian Election? The US State Department suggested that Twitter perform routine maintenance such that Twitter would only briefly be down during the middle of the night, Iranian time. This is not just some web2.0 toy or for teens any longer. It’s a core web service, like Google Search, Reddit or Digg. Sidenote: Reddit and Digg have been tremendous community forces of good in their own right, with Reddit and Digg users together raising over $185,000 in 12 hours for Haiti relief efforts.
Dynamic development team
After this post was published, @stevej informs me that only the three mentioned in the post were responsible for the site changes, though “frontend-type folks are ofter working on that page, though.” Thanks, Steve!
I was not able to find out if the only developers responsible were just the three mentioning it on Twitter, but whether 3 or 300, Twitter really has some talented people working for them. Just check out their blogs for evidence. These are some of the brightest folks the web has to offer. As Twitter continues to open up to the web at large with announcements going out via Twitter employees rather than traditional press releases, expect to see excitement about new features and realtime developments in the unfolding Twitter story and its players.
A users-eye view of location and activity in the stream
Location is Big
But it’s only a small part of the larger social landscape. Take a step back and think about what sites like Foursquare and Facebook are asking everyone: Who are you? Where are you? What are you doing? Who are your friends? What do you like? What do you DISLIKE? (I’m looking at you, Facebook.) Where are you going? What will you be doing? Who do you want to do it with? (You can take that to mean event invitations or something entirely different.) Do you want to see what else is around you? How about a menu? Do you need to do some shopping here today? Here are our specials. Want to pre-order something? Want to see what others thought was worth buying? (Square will be able to use location and purchase history to see hot spots.) No cash? No problem! This location accepts Square payments! Your friend’s birthday is today and he’s two streets over at the pub with the great New York style pizza for $1.25 and $2.50 pints ’til closing (Captain Ankeney’s in SW Portland). Want to send him a discounted Brightkite / Foursquare birthday pint and a slice? (recipient may claim gift up to 5 days after purchase, must present phone to cashier for redemption)?
…and it’s heating up.
I could tell you that no one knows what’s going to happen at SXSW Interactive this year, but I’d be lying. There will be game-changers erupting from the swarthy loins of sweet, sweet, Austin TX in a little over a week. There’s bound to be a billion startups and more pitching than spring training, but these are products, services and artists that were not born, trained nor tweeted for the first time yesterday. Take for example Brightkite: a global location-based social hub ready for action, with the users to prove it. MG Siegler’s timely article over @TechCrunch has a great rundown of Brightkite. The pure excitement of everything that is coming together right now is overwhelming, and it just keeps heating up. Rather than try to segue cleanly into this next bit I’ll just let you have it:
Action streams may help us share across services.
Adrian Chan is a social interaction designer helping to seed discussions that extend all of these topics into business scenarios that are likely to change the way business is done locally. Remember my scenarios at the top of the article? (think Square) Check out his brief on Action Streams, an evolution of the Activity Streams format . These standalone services are awesome and super-dope. They represent huge steps forward in what is possible even on their own. Start gluing them together and watch the heat build. Stay with me here: Right now, the Action Streams format is a “blue sky” envisioning of the possible requirements, implications and lots more than I can go into detail on, just click through and read Adrian’s brief when you have 2 minutes. Until it’s an agreed standard, or gets adoption, we need something now.
As Twitter web goes, so go the apps.
Twitter has been constantly adding features to their web interface since the service launched. When Twitter.com implements a feature, you can bet that it will be showing up in clients soon (@replies, retweets, lists) but some features remain API-only. Back in August 2009, they first demoed the location API, and it was rapidly adopted by Twitter clients almost across the board. Until Twitter.com adopts location however, the third-party apps are shooting in the dark. A post by one of Twitter’s developers, picked up and run through the rumor mill by MG may hint at what may be coming down the pike (maybe in May?), but until there’s solid word from Twitter or a confirmed source spills, we’re stuck with lone startups and developers doing the best they can to connect us and bring us together in new and exciting ways. I’m not too worried about it. They seem to be doing a pretty good job so far.
Social Inspiration: Prime time for location, actions and beyond…
Author’s Note: I began this post at midnight after waking with what seemed like hundreds of ideas swimming in my head. This is what spilled out. It is raw. It is not “bloggy” It may still have errors even after I’ve revised it a few times. I’m not going to edit it any more though. It will stay as raw and n00b and desperate as when it was first posted. For the boiled down, web-friendly, chunked-out version, see http://bit.ly/location-activity-stream (http://joelgibby.net/2010/03/02/a-users-eye-view-of-location-and-activity-in-the-stream/) This post is more just for posterity.
Inspiration is trending right now. Events like SXSW and the Refresh series are sparking ideas and connections at a blistering pace, leaving the rest of the world shouting “Hey, wait for us! That looks cool! iPhone only? Oh nice, a mobile web app! So I can get to it on my Droid phone?”
Yes, I wrote “Droid phone” – From personal experience, folks don’t understand that Android is a Mobile OS and not a Verizon Brand. That’s another story though. Ask me about Scarborough Research sometime.
With location the thermite ready to ignite SXSW this year, people are literally Buzzing ™ with excitement over what could be the event of the realtime web decade. And yes, I used thermite as a metaphor, for good reason:
While location is keeping developers up for days on end, hacking APIs, forging conduits for activity streams, hammering out their own duct work for realtime data, it’s only a small part of the larger social landscape. Take a step back and think about what sites like Foursquare and Facebook are asking everyone: Who are you? Where are you? What are you doing? Who are your friends? What do you like? What do you DISLIKE? (I’m looking at you, Facebook.) Where are you going? What will you be doing? Who do you want to do it with? (You can take that to mean event invitations or social and location-based personals, big in Japan, not so much stateside yet.) Do you want to see what else is around you? How about a menu? Do you need to do some shopping here today? Here are our specials. Want to pre-order something? Want to see what others thought was worth buying? (Square, you genius devils, you!) No cash? No problem! This location accepts Square payments! Your friend’s birthday is today and he’s two streets over at the pub with the great New York style pizza for $1.25 and $2.50 pints ’til closing (Captain Ankeney’s in SW Portland). Want to send him a discounted brightkite / foursquare birthday pint and a slice? (recipient may claim gift up to 5 days after purchase, must present phone to cashier for redemption)? Like Penny Lane said: “It’s all happening.”
I could tell you that no one knows what’s going to happen at SXSW this year, but I’d be lying. There will be game-changers erupting from the swarthy loins of sweet, sweet, Austin TX in a little over a week. While there’s bound to be a billion startups and more pitching than spring training, these are products, services and artists that were not born, trained nor tweeted for the first time yesterday. Take for example Brightkite: a global location-based social hub ready for action, with the users to prove it. MG Siegler’s timely article over @TechCrunch has a great rundown of @brightkite that takes all the excitement of the aforementioned thermite bomb (trust me, thermite is exciting; just don’t stare at the white core or you’ll go blind, kid) and compresses it into a 762-word WMD. If this blog post (mine, not MG’s) ever gets legs, I owe it all to him. The pure excitement of everything that is coming together right now is overwhelming, and it just keeps heating up. Rather than try to segue cleanly into this next bit I’ll just let you have it:
Adrian Chan is a social interaction designer helping to seed discussions that extend all of these topics into business scenarios that are likely to change the way business is done locally. Remember my scenarios at the top of the article? (think Square) Check out his brief on Action Streams, an evolution of the Activity Stream format . These standalone services are awesome and super-dope. They represent huge steps forward in what is possible even on their own. Start gluing them together however, and well, Daft Punk just showed up and is now playing at your house. Stay with me here: Right now, the Action Streams format is a “blue sky” envisioning of the possible requirements, implications and lots more than I can go into detail on, just click through and read it when you have 2 minutes. Until it’s an agreed standard, or gets adoption, here’s what I came up with (was awoken from bed at 12:00AM as the calendar flipped from Feb to Mar, with the full moon shining into my bedroom. Yeah, I know. Weird.) Check it out:
I’ll update my twitter status if I’m feeling command-line-ish today; maybe tomorrow I use Brightkite mobile web or the native Android Gowalla or Foursquare apps (still in need of lots of work, the both of ya)someday, with the following status:
Eating a Big Ass Burger. !@BrunchBox
It contains all the elements needed for basic social location: Who I am (my twitter username), Where I am (new “bang-at” tag (you heard it here first, folks) puts me at BrunchBox on SW 5th and Stark in downtown Portland OR), and because BrunchBox has a named twitter account and their location is set, API apps can see both named places (think Foursquare and Gowalla) and geotagged coordinates (think Flickr or Picasa). With the right amount of API glue, I can even see which of my friends (on whatever service has open APIs for friend location) are nearby using both the named location, and/or the coordinates. These open APIs will allow anyone with a bit of programming experience and inspiration to mashup and remix these services in new, possibly awesome ways. Sure, it will take a bit of math to calculate search radius and .. oh what’s that you say? There’s already APIs from Google or just about any other map provider to do that? Oh, OK, cool. I will also wager that Twitter will be making some huge location announcements very soon.
And that’s just using Twitter. There’s a sea (well more like a lake right now, but it’s a big lake, mind you) of apps, services, developers and local folks like you that are focused on more than just location. It’s going to be huge, trust me, but there’s definitely more to it than you might think.
PS: I’m broke and want to go to SXSW. If any industry (tech/journalism/K12 Education) folks want to take a bet on a dark horse that could pay off big, I need airfare, housing and an SXSW Interactive Badge. Hollaz.
#now-at #location #bang-at #exclamation #foursquare #gowalla #activity #stream #action #brightkite #socialstream #social #news #funded #hollaz #facebook #techcrunch #MGSiegler #parislemon #SXSW #AustinTX #Austin #web3 #retweet #rtmon (retweet monday foolz) More tags coming soon when I get a break from fixing our VoIP system. Techie please!