Fucked By Free

Subtitled: Kicking Yourself Ain’t Worth The Knee Strain

Backstory: Back in November, “Web2.0 Blog of Blogs,” Mashable held a teensy little design contest to avoid paying a fair market price on a look for a t-shirt (snicker). The prize: An iPhone and some other boringish stuff. But mostly, the reward would come from the glory obtained by rising to the top of the community-generated content heap, and being deservedly recognized by the A-list crowd for one’s mad skillz. This was one of those half-assed design competitions that didn’t even include the usual “all intellectual property rights are hereby relinquished and exclusive commercial rights granted to [Company] upon submission of design work” disclaimer. Nope, just a super-casual, super-laid-back, “meh” of a contest.

And it ended up getting some pretty nice entries. The winning design - a cute little potato (get it? Mashable?) - is really polished, and a few of the others are remarkably wearable.

Naturally, I entered this contest (otherwise, why blog about it?). I couldn’t sleep, had read practically everything remotely interesting that had been posted to the internet that day, and decided - what the heck! - to fire up Adobe Illustrator to design a couple shirts.

This was 2:00 a.m., mind you.

At 3:00 (a mere 4 hours before I was to get ready for another grueling Monday at my former job), I submitted my designs. All 15 of them.

I went with a pretty tried-and-true form for all the designs: clever, slightly off-color slogan, centered on the shirt - and a simple, but cool giant M! on the back. Totally original, I know. Still - they felt appropriate to the Mashable brand, and I quite like a couple of the slogans I came up with (particularly the “Mashable is sexy in Helvetica, too.” shirt, which is the only one with a different layout, and not set in Myriad Pro.). But would I win? Nah. Never would’ve expected to. I contributed the designs partly as an embrace of the culture of free, partly out of boredom, and partly out of some insomniacical mania.

You see, growing up I had a lot of trouble falling asleep. And in my waking hours - especially those spent in high school and college - I found that I was drawn to extreme amounts of repetition and, in this, creativity. One night, I somehow managed to write 30 pages (single-spaced) of statements that began with the words “Staying up to...” Get the picture?

OK, now, fast-forward to today.

Mashable has opened a cool, new t-shirt shop using Zazzle.com (Zaz-what?!) that contains “40 different designs to choose from to show your love for all things Mashable, including submissions from our t-shirt design contest.”

“Sweet,” thought I, “Maybe they used one of mine.”

Well, yeah. Actually 12.

Twelve of the forty designs are mine. Take a look:



Oh, but wait!

These aren‘t my designs at all! What in God’s name is Arial Rounded doing in the place of Myriad Pro in some of them? I cry foul! Sure, Arial Rounded is oh-so-typically Web 2.0, but come on, guys. Eww. But yes, all of those corny slogans are mine.

OK, now what’s my point? Am I looking to be compensated for my grievances? No, no, no. Nor am I trying to bash Mashable for their behavior.

What I am doing is trying to provide a tiny bit of caveat emptor to folks who might decide to enter similar contests in the future. Rules are important. Rights are important. Your creative work is important and has value. And if you wish to give it up, you should do so willingly, knowingly, and with a clear understanding of what it means to relinquish control of your intellectual property without fair compensation.

In my case, this means I have to watch as Mashable launches an online store from which they stand to make thousands of dollars in profit doing little more than leveraging their (deservedly-strong) brand, with an inventory of products created at no cost to them. Brilliant for Mashable. Shitty for the ladies and gents who did the hard work designing the shirts. Shitty especially, for me, upon realizing that fully 30% of their catalog is work I produced, and for which I received not even a mere hyperlink to my blog. I was credited for my designs on the Flickr pool, but not linked. Meh.

Certainly, all of this would have been nice: a link, share of the revenue, free copies of my shirts, a free iPhone to supplement mine which is looking a little sad after doing some pavement surfing a couple months ago, fame and glory. But I’m not asking for any of that. And I am surely not asking that Mashable remove my designs from their store. A part of me thinks that it is seriously awesome that my work is being sold by one of the biggest blogs on the web.

All I want is for a few of you out there - in situations similar in some degree to mine - to be careful. Free is a business model. Which means thinking long and hard about how choosing it benefits you, benefits your intended market/audience and benefits the world.

Looking back, I still would’ve made the same choice, even if the moment of “sticker shock” was profoundly unsettling.

Oh, I nearly forgot: here is the store.

ReadWriteWeb Redesign Analysis And Critique

ReadWriteWeb, a popular technology blog started by Richard MacManus launched a redesign yesterday (by San Francisco-based Ideacodes). The new look was greeted with a reaction ranging from “it’s awesome” to “Worst. Look. Ever.” with a lot of stuff in-between.

Before I get into my opinion on the design, let me just say that ReadWriteWeb is one of my top-read blogs. MacManus is a smart guy, and his team of writers are pretty high-quality, too. It’s good stuff. I wouldn’t be so picky if I didn’t care.

And this is precisely why the new design is so unfortunate. I won’t pretend to remember what the old design looked like (and the WayBack Machine is down at the moment, so I can’t check), but what was always important to me about ReadWriteWeb was its content. Well-written, well-researched articles offering an interesting and original point of view. The site made sense. And now it’s all over the place. Navigation is redundant, inconsistent, and lacks hierarchy. I don’t want to click anything at all. There are all sorts of little issues with the redesign, and I’ll touch on some of them below, but the biggest issue is this lack of hierarchy - fueled, at least in part, by the tendency of successful blogs to become “content networks.” GigaOM recently relaunched version 2.0 with a similar focus (and a redesign by the same company - coincidence?) and TechCrunch has long been a poster child for this type of “community” of related sites linking to one another. But it just convolutes things and it’s impossible to know what content you should actually care about. What’s important here, and how are these elements connected?

Another huge issue for me (and a quite unexpected one, to be honest) is Richard MacManus’ response to the criticism in the comments. He posted two very long and detailed comments of his own addressing the negative reactions, which, on the surface, might sound like the right thing to do. Isn’t that part of the Web 2.0 ethos, after all?

Yeah, it is, but not the way MacManus handled it on this occasion. I won’t spend too much time talking about this, because you should just read his responses for yourself, but among other things, he even goes so far as to state that he doesn’t respect certain commenters - not their comments - but as people. His justification for this is that they didn’t show respect for himself or the designers, and I don’t see this at all. Two of the three commenters he singled out actually had positive things to say about the design, and I fail to recall a rule somewhere that specifies that all opinions on the subject of design have to be justified by technical know-how.

Not everyone is a designer. Not everyone knows how to explain what they don’t like about a design. You can’t ask readers for feedback and then say that only qualified, properly-educated professionals are allowed to have an opinion.

Here’s another thing that really got to me. In his response, MacManus writes:

Winston said: "Guessing that this may be the result of attempting to appease conflicting opinions through out the design process. Save opinions till the comp is fully fleshed out, then select one.. no mixing and matching."

RM: This is an extraordinary assumption to make. "Conflicting opinions"? There were none. Winston, up to this point your critique was valid. I didn't agree with a lot of it, but at least it didn't jump to conclusions like this.

He claims Winston made an absurd jump to the idea of conflicting opinions leading to issues in the design process (all too typical, gotta say). But in the article announcing the design, MacManus actually says pretty much exactly that.

Personally I love the new logo and header, but I am certain they will provoke different opinions. Why? Because that was the case with the ReadWriteWeb authors during the design process!

I’m not saying that MacManus was wrong to respond, nor that he is wrong about everything he defends. Some of the commenters were indeed disrespectful - it’s the internet, after all - but when MacManus says, “Anyway, enough of me on my high horse,” that’s a clue that he took the wrong approach in his response, and failed to attempt to understand why the reaction was so negative and why “much of the critique here did not mention how clean, modern and fresh the design is.” Could it be because it’s not? Is that even a possibility?

Let’s take a look at the design itself, now, starting with the new logo.

(ReadWriteWeb logo: Before and after)

Comments on the original logo:

• The slash is a little awkward and has too light of a stroke.
• The color is a little unbalanced - too much red on the left.
• The flat yin/yang is just fine.
• Interesting typeface.
• Clear separation between the Read/Write part of the name and the Web.
• Perhaps too thin to be reproduced at small sizes.

The new logo, however, takes these problems and expands on them.

• Univers is a poor choice as the typeface. The condensed version here, with multiple point sizes being mixed together in CamelCapsStyle and with a hierarchy of blackness makes it pretty unreadable, even if the focus should be on the initials. (sidenote: are they trying to purchase the rww.com domain?)
• Why the subtle gradient on the Yin/Yang? The rest of the site and the logo use flat colors.
• I actually like the deep red color, why is the logo just black and grey?
• Why did they flip the Yin/Yang over?
• I know MacManus likes the Yin/Yang but it doesn’t work with the new slash-less branding. It’s also an extremely overused graphic symbol, and can’t stand on its own.
• The logo is really horizontal and has to be reproduced at a relatively large size to be readable.
• It really does just look awkward and unprofessional.
• Why the rounded rectangle enclosure for the YinYang? It it supposed to be the same as the GigaOm branding?
• Kerning (space between letters) is bad. Looks like the default, and makes it seem like there is an actual space between Read and Write, while Write and Web are more snug. Look closely at the dWr and eWe groupings to see this imbalance.

Moving on. My least favorite part of the redesign is the header. Here’s the first piece.

Logo aside, what are the issues? Well, as I mentioned earlier in the post, there is no clear hierarchy to the navigation. Some links on top of the (admittedly odd) rounded rectangle, and some underneath, separated by little shims. Everything gets a decent white rectangle on hover, but the sharp angles don’t quite fit with the rounded corners of the larger box. I actually tried to click the “RWW Network” text several times before realizing it is not a link. The light grey doesn’t do nearly enough to communicate “I am not a link, even though I’m in a really prominent position on the page.”

What is Last100? AltSearchEngine? How are these related? Is the CamelCaps supposed to be enough of a clue that these are sites in the RWW Network?

EverybodyUsesCamelCapsNowadays.

The right half of the header actually irks me more than anything else on the site. First, more links. How many links can you fit in one header with absolutely no hierarchy? RWW has 16. Seventeen if you count the logo, which takes you back to the homepage (sigh, even when you’re on the homepage!). Seventeen links and not a single one is remotely more important than the others.

But that’s not the bad part. The bad - awful - painful part is this collection of subscription forms and Feedburner chiclets. So many boxes, offering so little functionality to a regular reader. It clutters things up and isn’t even clear that the Feedburner chiclets are linked to entirely different feeds than the forms beside them. RWW looks too much like RSS. The custom “Go” buttons looks odd, and what does that mean anyway? Where are you going to go when you click it?!

Why not a single text area with a check box or radio buttons that let potential subscribers select daily or weekly email feeds? Make daily the default and only require someone to do something if they want a non-default setting, rather than forcing every potential subscriber to look at all these boxes and buttons and image links (and don’t forget the “Subscribe” text link, which points to the XML file) and decide between them.

And then there’s another text box underneath, making the header a veritable forest of forms. Can I submit my CV there, too?

I hope you’re not browsing with a font size larger than the default. If you are, you’ll notice that the header navigation is completely broken from an accessibility standpoint. Links disappear, everything overlaps (including forms, which I had no idea was even possible!).

OK, that’s the big stuff. Now to some littler comments on other aspects of the redesign:

This I don’t understand. Why does the footer look like this on the home page:

And like this on another page?

The “Earlier This Week” section is just fine.

And I like these post boxes on the home page, with the related images and preview of the post.

Featured Posts is also nice, but too far down the page to actually be “featured.”

Decent main content on the home page. Latest post and popular posts are featured. My beefs with the design are a lot less with the way the content is presented than with how it is structured and the navigation.

Look, more links! Lots more links in the footer. All the links in the header are down there, too. Why not put a : after RWW Network to separate it more, rather than a | which again makes it look like a visited link

OK, what’s going on here with the formatting for the comment form? Look at that (lack of) alignment! I don’t love it, and it takes away from the cleanliness of the design and the occasionally nice light grey horizontal rules.

And finally, we get two sections in the sidebar with tag clouds. One labeled “Popular Tags” that contains at least 50, and then a totally gratuitous Swicki widget, of which there are two in the sidebar (one with tags, and one that is just a Search form). Tags are cool, but this is overkill and totally non-functional.

What do you think?

50 Critical Questions About Your Website:

1. Can you tell someone how to get to your site without having to spell anything?
   
2. Are the URLs human-readable or are they full of special characters and dynamically-generated gobbledygook?
3. Do you have an About page?
4. Can visitors tell what your site is about without visiting your About page?
   
5. Is your contact information readily available on every page - or at least from every page?
6. If not, what are you hiding from? Your customers?
7. Is your home page doing you any favors or is it merely an “Enter Site” gateway?
   
8. Do you have an RSS Feed?
9. Did you decorate for the holidays?
10. When is the last time you added new content?
    
11. Why has it been so long?
    
12. Is your site ranking highly in search engines for relevant keywords?
13. What about for your name? Or your business name?
14. What are your relevant keywords, anyway?
    
15. Is anyone linking to you these days?
    
16. If not, what can you do to make this happen?
17. Who are you linking to these days?
    
18. How long does it take your site to load at your mother’s house?
19. Do you need to download anything on her computer to even see your site?
20. What is the single most important thing you want a visitor to do?
    
21. Is that clear from looking at your site?
22. Does your site look professional, or does it look like a teenager’s MySpace page?
23. Do you link out to your other web presences (social network profiles, Twitter account, YouTube page, Flickr photostream)?
24. Is it clear what content is protected by Copyright and what is free to take and re-use?
25. What one thing can you do to your site today to increase visitors?
26. Are you commenting on blogs and building relationships with other site-owners in your industry or niche?
27. How does your site look on a mobile device?
    
28. An iPhone?
    
29. Blackberry?
    
30. Cheapo-plastic-freebie phone?
    
31. Amazon Kindle?
    
32. Is your site usable with images turned off?
    
33. On a computer with no Flash or Javascript?
    
34. In every web browser?
    
35. How many clicks does it take for a visitor to give you money?
36. Is your site “fine for the moment” or is it flexible enough to be fine for the next 5 years?
37. Are your ads annoying?
38. How easy is it for a visitor to leave a comment or write a review?
39. Can your site run without you?
40. Is the entire site backed up?
41. Is the important stuff backed up multiple times in multiple formats in multiple physical locations?
42. How long would it take to turn your entire site navy blue with white text?
    
43. Is this time measured in seconds (awesome), minutes (good), or hours (you’re doing things wrong)?
44. Is your branding consistent between your site, your printed material, your storefront, and you as a person?
45. Do your product descriptions sound like they were written by a person or by a mentally-ill robot programmed with the vocabulary of an out-of-work Madison Avenue ad guy whose last account was for one of those food processors they sell on TV at 2am?
46. Do you care about your website?
    
47. Is it important to you?
    
48. Are your readers and customers important to you as people, not just as eyeballs with wallets?
    
49. Would you be sad - actually sad - if your site disappeared tomorrow?
50. What would you do if it did?
    

Here Comes Another Bubble

Joining in on the viral action this morning.

Check out this hilarious video (a parody of Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start The Fire” called “Here Comes Another Bubble”) that’s appeared in nearly every single one of my feeds over the last two days.



For the record, I don’t think we’re seeing a bubble, but a funny video is a funny video is a funny video.

And while I’m on the subject of video, you may have noticed that there’s an ever-present sponsored YouTube video at the bottom of the blog pages. I’m testing out this recent addition to the AdSense family. It’s supposed to offer video content relevant to my blog, as well as not-completely-useless advertisements. Let me know if you notice something that seems out of place, lame, or distracting.

I’m trying to find some unobtrusive yet effective ways to make a tiny bit of money on the blog. If anyone has experience with different advertisers or affiliate programs (or better yet, some connections), I’d love to hear about it.

And if you would like to advertise your company/product/service on the site, drop me an email, and we’ll talk.

Ultimately, though, if these things get in the way, I’ll get rid of them in a heartbeat. Let me know, guys. And thanks.

Facebook Revolutionizes Advertising!

Gaping Void

Are you a fan-sumer?

Does that term make you want to stab yourself on the inside of your elbow with an electric-pencil-sharpener-sharpened paper clip?

Well, beware of Facebook these days, dear friend. Today they’ve launched a new advertising initiative aimed at letting you do what you’ve always dreamed of: become an unpaid shill for products and brands you like. And, perhaps even more so, use Facebook to “stalk” Coca Cola or Apple or Product (RED). I know, I know, hold back the tears of joy.

Here's what is changing:

• You now have a way to connect with products, businesses, bands, celebrities and more on Facebook. (You mean aside from the Sponsored Pages and Groups that already existed? Wow! Amazing!)


• Ads should be getting more relevant and more meaningful to you. (Like this one?)
  
• You now have the option to share actions you take on other sites with your friends on Facebook. (More specifically, you have the option to opt-out of sharing actions you take on other sites on a case-by-case basis, which for some will raise privacy concerns, and for others - like me - it will be seen as kinda stupid. )
  

Nick Carr:

Facebook, which distinguished itself by being the anti-MySpace, is now determined to out-MySpace MySpace. It's a nifty system: First you get your users to entrust their personal data to you, and then you not only sell that data to advertisers but you get the users to be the vector for the ads. And what do the users get in return? An animated Sprite Sips character to interact with.

Ultimately, I fail to see how this is new. Or interesting. And I’m sure Facebook will make plenty of money with it, but don’t think advertisers will fare as well. I stand by my assertion that the future of advertising is being shown ads when you are looking for something. Ads as information, not as roadblocks. Yes, I see the value in being able to befriend brands (and I’ve talked about this before, too), but what Facebook’s doing here isn’t new. MySpace has done it forever, and even Facebook has - though they used to charge companies for the “honor” of creating a profile page.

Now, you too can make a page for your product, just like I have here for Frivmo Design (new site on the way soon, by the way!).

Some screenshots:





More discussion here.

Tag Clouds: Still Cool?

Love ’em or hate ’em, there’s no denying that tag clouds have played a big part in the design of a lot of so-called Web 2.0 sites. Today, Smashing Magazine devotes another of its lengthy posts to this loved/loathed navigational element, and it’s worth a look, whether you’re in the mood for good examples or some painfully bad examples.

It seems to me that tag clouds as a design trend have been true to their name, especially susceptible to subtle changes in the weather, and I forecast clearer and clearer skies as the months roll by. Done right, tag clouds offer a unique and sweet alternative for navigating the increasingly-hard-to-categorize content in the miscellaneous and meta Web, and they can definitely look cool. But far too frequently they are an usable mess of word soup, used as an excuse for not considering which information is most relevant to readers, and how to best optimize the site so they can find what they are looking for.

That said, if you’re a Blogger user, I’ve got a super-simple tutorial for adding a tag cloud to your blog that was written back when this site had a tag cloud of its own.

Check it out at the link below:

• How To Make An Awesome Tag Cloud

There are some nice tag cloud generators linked to on Smashing Magazine, too.

Tom Is Not My Friend

Word on the street is that my (and everyone’s) first “friend” on MySpace (Tom) has been lying to us all along to seem cool. Turns out, he’s considerably older than he let on in his profile - at least 36 or 37, not the 32 he claims to be. This sets a bad example and makes it okay for creepy old men to lie about their age to help them get more edgy underage chicks to “friend” them so they can see the emo, soft-porn, self-portraits.

MySpace was about trust. I trusted Tom. I trusted Rupert. I trusted NewsCorp. I trusted them and today that trust was betrayed.

On another note, I think I should probably update (fix) my age on the site...

NY Times Archives Are Free At Last!

Last month it was rumored that the New York Times was going to be phasing-out the for-pay access to its archives and “special” articles known as TimesSelect.

Well, today it has become official.

Effective “midnight Tuesday night” (that’s Wednesday, I think), this move reflects “a growing view in the industry that subscription fees cannot outweigh the potential ad revenue from increased traffic on a free site.”

Which is to say, the Times finally figured out that they can make a ton more money advertising and expanding their readership through search engine results and links than by charging a relative handful of people what amounts to a convenience fee for content that should have arguably been free and open to the public from the beginning.

Past demons aside, this is a great move for the Times, which, alongside the pretty cool My Times and the Times Reader, positions this newspaper of newspapers a leader in the transition into the digital age.

Maybe, just maybe, this is one dinosaur that will make it through the Cretaceous.

Get Satisfaction!

A great-looking new site called Satisfaction (www.getsatisfaction.com) has opened into public beta.

By their own words, Satisfaction is

...people-powered customer service for absolutely everything. More specifically, though, it's a place where communities of customers come together to answer each others questions, share ideas with each other or with an organization, report and solve problems and generally talk about about what matters to them around these products or services.

When the organization or company is involved too it gives them a way to engage with their customers around the issues that matter to their customers most. Satisfaction provides a neutral playing ground where companies and customers can interact to everybody's benefit.

As of this writing, there are over 250 companies listed, with a good handful of them “participating,” which means that company representatives are part of the discussion that takes place. Here’s an example of a pretty active company page.

If this site reaches critical mass, it looks to be a critical resource for modern consumers, and a great way to become engaged in the brands you care about. As a business owner, this is a fantastic way to speak with your customers and create a community around your product or service.

I’ll be keeping close watch on Satisfaction in the months to come.

Also, the Satisfaction team gives a fabulous example of a blog to accompany your web service.

Happy Birthday Frivolous Motion

One year ago today, I started writing this little blog. Five-hundred-fifty-something posts later, it’s still going. Allow me a moment of self-indulgence to say, “Wow.”

Thanks for sticking around (or for just joining, if you’re new!). It’s been quite an experience getting this far, and I really look forward to Year Two.

It’s nearly impossible to believe that only a year ago Facebook was still this little social networking site with a controversial new feature called a “News Feed.” How far they’ve come.

How far we’ve all come.

2008 is going to blow my mind.

Mmm...Bacn...

Not a typo.

Bacn is the word for the new, anti-spam spam email that we Web2.0-ers get daily in the form of “friend requests,” social networking invites, Twitter “nudges,” e-Bills, subscription updates, and their brethren.

Tasty little morsels of content, but they don’t add much substance or nutritive value to our not-exactly-thinning Inbox waistlines.

My advice: I know it can be really, really awesome, but try not to eat too much.

Duh.

(Thanks to Chris Brogan to explaining this already-sweeping-across-the-Web phenomenon).

Curious what 200 calories of the real thing look(s) like? Check out this post from January.

Google Maps Announces YouTube-Style Embedding

There was a rumor a couple weeks ago that this would happen, and today it became a reality: Google has made it possible to embed customized maps on a webpage or blog with a simple copy/paste of code. You can even use the pretty-awesome My Maps feature to create a custom map mashup. Good stuff.

Here’s a quick one I made:

Brothels Near Pahrump, NV
(my old hometown)


View Larger Map

Online Video Hits The Mainstream

Marketers, I think it’s time you started shifting some of your ad-spending budget from television to the Web.

The results of a recent Pew Internet study (as reported by Trendspotting) show that a full 57% of Americans have used the internet to watch or download video, with 19% doing so daily.

One out of five Americans watch video online every single day. That is huge.

They’re also sharing links a lot more than I expected (57%, and this goes up to 67% for young users), and about 13% of viewers are choosing to watch commercial material (a whopping 22% of the kiddie set).

YouTube is, of course, the hands-down leader in this segment, with 27% of all users watching videos there, and commanding the eyes of a full 49% of viewers between 18 and 29.

Online video has made it. There’s no turning back now.

Social Networking: Are You Committed?

How many of the social networking sites you’re a part of do you visit every day? For how many do you do more than sign in (i.e. send messages, post content, add applications, etc.)? Which sites would you say you’re an active member of, and for which are you merely “a number”? Are there any that you’ve for which you’ve signed up - never to return? Which ones? Why?

What value do you find in the sites you actively use? Do they allow you to do something you can’t elsewhere, or do they just do it better? Is the design of the site important to you? Are the sites you actively use well-designed or ugly? How simple is it to do what you want to do? Are there extraneous steps?

Do you do anything to create revenue for the sites you use? Do you click ads, buy stuff, have a paid account?

Which one social site would you refuse to give up? And how much would you pay to keep it?

Die Web 2.0, Die.

Web 2.0 is dead and I have killed it. Right here, right now. Do not pass go, do not collect $200 million from a wussy-Valley-V.C. The beast lie slain in a digital heap of bits and bytes and asynchronous server calls. This is no phoenix - there will be no rebirth, no emergence from its own ashes. For the future to come, there must be a revolution. There must be a drastic departure - a sharp turn away from the sins of the past.

The hype, the beta, the usability errors in the guise of a “release early, release often” mantra, the rounded corners, the shiny tables, the nonsensical “Our original name was taken so we re-spelled it” domain names, the social networking site for xxxxxx, the social bookmarking xxxxxx, the video sharing xxxxxx, the it might not be quite legal but sign up anyway we care about your privacy xxxxxx, the business model? hah!, the Ajaxified, Flashified, Scriptified, Ruby-on-Railsified, Adsense-supported, made possible by your generous donations, content-lacking, MySpace ripoff (could you not find a better site to base yours on?!), start pages, tagging schmagging, long tail, pseudo-wannabe-innovation, Googlebait, oh please oh please Google buy my product please oh please I love and worship you and somehow think I have made something better than your engineers and how could you pass up buying this product that doesn’t even work but don’t blame me it’s just in beta and we couldn’t afford to do usability testing so we’re pretending to let some serial-joining geeks have some super-exclusive private access so they’ll do all the bug-testing for us and blog about it all for free and then our servers will explode because everybody on the world wide net was conned into thinking that private and exclusive meant awesome and so tried to sign up on the first day and we couldn’t do anything about it because we were busy drinking beer and watching Diggnation rather than coding and buying servers and paying attention and actually learning from the mistakes that everyone else has made a dozen hundred thousand million times.

It’s over for me. Dead. Gone. I’m done. I’m ready for a Web that actually works as advertised. A Web that lets people actually communicate with one another. A Web that lets you own what you post and read what you want to where you want to. A Web that lets you decide when you want to see an advertisement, and when you want to hear sound, and when you want to sign up, and when you want to destroy all traces of your account. A Web that departs from the metaphor of pages - that understands it is not print - that a web page is not like a newspaper page or a magazine page or a book page. A Web that is not so full of bugs and holes and 500, 501, 503, 404 errors. A Web that I can use and find value in without giving away my email address and remembering a password and whether your stupid site disallows special characters or requires numbers or is case sensitive. A Web where A-listers don’t bitch and moan about hierarchy in the publishing world in one breath and in the next uphold that same hierarchy by being stingy with links in order to protect their “authority.” A Web less intent on replacing things, and more on making things better. A Web that is non-restrictive, that doesn’t lock me in, one made by and for people, not machines. A Web that remembers when I ask it to, and forgets - really forgets - unless I tell it not to. A Web that is accessible, standards-compliant, usable, but not afraid to take risks. A Web intent on offending, alienating, polarizing, politicizing, persuading, teaching, inciting. A Web with a point to make, however contradictory. A Web with a story to tell, not just news to report. A Web where people aren’t afraid to comment or participate - where the geeks and early adopters aren’t self-righteous assholes ready to scream NOOB the minute someone asks a question. A Web of people and ideas and art and culture and poetry and connection and love and desire and experimentation and guessing and trial-and-error rather than corporations and greed and money and Truth and property. A Web kinda sorta maybe a little bit more like this. A Web less like a cloud and more like the rays of the sun. A Web that feels more friendly because it’s made up of my friends. A Web I can believe in. A Web I can trust. A Web that is fun. A Web in which it’s okay - even awesome - that Everything is Miscellaneous, because it is, and it should be, and it’s better that way.

It’s coming - I can tell. Something insanely awesome is just now peeking over the horizon. I can’t wait.

Die, Web 2.0, die.

iPhone Apps Already Hitting The Web

Pete Mortensen of Wired (and Digg, and many other websites) are reporting the very first applications being developed for iPhone. There is an alternative interface for reading Digg, a glorified grocery list called OneTrip, and, of course, a Twitter app called iTweetr.

Fifteen days before the launch of this product - a mere three days after the WWDC keynote - and we are already beginning to see innovative and hot-looking programs being written for a device that pretty much no one has ever touched. I stand firmly behind this post and this post. What an exciting time to be a web designer/developer.

Web Development For iPhone Is Fucking Brilliant

Excuse the profanity - I had a revelation.

Millions of children (yes children) are learning, working with, and experimenting with the exact technologies used for development on iPhone - HTML and JavaScript - every single day.

They know all about embedding code for widgets and videos, and many of them are teaching themselves to edit and customize the code on sites like MySpace. Sure, most of their efforts amount to slice-my-eyes-50-ways-with-a-razor-blade levels of awful, but that’s not the point. What matters is that this group of youngsters - a group who, you’ll recall, hasn’t breathed a single breath in a world without Internet - is not afraid. They’re not afraid of code, of RSS feeds, of uploading, downloading, syncing, embedding, linking, SMS-ing, clicking, dragging, poking, or any of the other myriad methods of interaction developers have spent years trying to teach reluctant users. This group is not reluctant. They’ve spent their entire lives in front of screens and they just get it, and more and more they are dirtying their hands playing with all the gooey stuff that exists beneath the interface - like tags and elements and variables and feeds.

This is the first generation in the history of mankind that knows how to program a VCR.

Think about that. It’s true, even though many of them probably have no clue what a VCR is.

The reason that making the web the main development platform for iPhone is brilliant is because every one of these millions of children can develop for it. Sure, their apps will never be Google-level, or even Adobe-level, but they’ll still be apps. There is a huge business in widget-making right now - companies that make it easier for the kids to customize and embed - and iPhone will literally explode that ecosystem. Therein lies the ultimate value: hyperpersonalization.

With a pretty much infinite number of available URLs - every single user can control a multitude of ultra-customized widget-type applications, pulling and sharing data from Facebook, MySpace, news sites, blogs - even music and video from the web. Each app/widget gets its own page. Everything talks to everything else. Complete personalization is only a synchronized Safari bookmark away. And it won’t matter if their web is ugly - I can just as easily make mine non-ugly.

iPhone has the potential to go viral (as they say) in a huge way. The power to develop - previously in the hands of the few - is now, quite literally, at the fingertips of millions.

Postscript: Price, schmice. Trust me on this. I’ve got my pixel ruler out and ready.

More iPhone here.

Apple WWDC07, Safari For Windows, iPhone Dreams

Steve Jobs’ keynote address this morning at WWDC2007 either delighted or disappointed, depending on one’s expectations. Jobs announced several major changes to the OSX user interface, including updates to the Finder, which has many Mac fans saying, “finally.”

You can see all the cool stuff (and believe me, it looks cool) on Apple’s redesigned site, but there’s one thing I want to comment on:

Apple released a version (still very much Beta) of its Safari web browser for Windows.

While ostensibly about extending its market-share, this release is huge for one reason: cross-platform iPhone development. While traditional desktop application developers will no doubt be furious at the insistence that anything running in a web browser is an application, and they will fiercely deny the possibility of web-based apps being the future - well, they are and it is and the announcement today that folks will be able to code full-fledged programs to run in Safari for iPhone just as they do for the regular old web is a major catalyst for this future.

Think of what Google and 37 Signals and all of the great web developers will be able to do with the iPhone. Think about what it would mean to run real GMail, real Google Docs and Spreadsheets, Basecamp, Campfire, Facebook, Twitter, internet video and TV. While local, downloaded (or installed) apps would be a swell addition - I won’t deny that - there is really precious little they can do that can’t be done with the tools we’ve been given. And not having to install programs leaves more space for data - like photos, movies, music, and...well, this is where my personal wishful thinking comes in...stuff you download from the web using Google Gears.

It hasn’t been mentioned, but Google Gears could be the thing that bridges the gap and ushers in a new age of programming, in which it won’t matter what’s in the cloud and what’s on the device, or when or where or how you are or are not connected to the Internet.

Think of the possibilities that iPhone opens up. Think of the things that this device could do with no more than an innocuous software update.

Think of the future. Indeed, it has already begun.

Twitter Insights

Here’s a taste of some of the interesting conversations, insights, and debates I’ve had on Twitter lately (yes, naysayers, that does happen). I’m just putting the messages I sent, partly because I think it reads clearly, partly so I don’t accidentally misrepresent a fellow Tweeter, partly to bias things in my favor (clearly), and partly to entice you to check out and explore the site.

On The War (with PeoriaPundit, whose side you can read here - you might have to go back a couple pages to find the relevant Tweets, which will read “@frivmo”)

Pardon my saying so, but "voted against supporting the troops" is a pretty far-from-balanced way of putting things.

The other side would say "Voted to support a bad war and allow a dictator President to have his way." Both are posturing. Both spin.

As consumers of filtered news and media we need to learn how to peel away hidden biases and examine our own sub-unconscious shading of truth

Strongly disagree with you there. The troops are being killed. More money is not gonna stop that.

We need real solutions. Continually throwing money at a sinking ship doesn't solve a thing. Someone has to say enough.

Congress gets to determine war policy. They've let Bush take control, and that's where there's a problem.

It's incorrect to assert that those who don't want to keep paying are against the troops. Not true. Please - that's absurd.

Agreed on supplies. Don't think signing any and all spending bills is answer. Congress needs to do more-make better bills.

Just because Bush threatens to veto doesn't mean Congress can't stop being lazy and come up with a solution to override him.

I'd like to see compromise for the sake of our troops. Rather than fight about funding/not - fight about how to bring home.

One more before bed - Obama et al voting against (when it clearly would pass) is a symbolic gesture we need to start changin'

On Web Design (with Vaspers, here)

Candid admission from a web designer: Not one of my past clients' sites has received the traffic my blog gets in a week. In their lifetime.

They want a site, but think it will work without any effort. No consistent updates, no evangelism. None have used blogs I made for them.

No links in, no links out, no SEO, no community involvement, no email signatures, badges. Any wonder why none of them sell their products?

If you're making a website because "everybody needs one," and don't plan to use it daily (at least weekly), you're wasting money and time.

Would you spend hundreds/thousands on a print campaign and then keep all the postcards in your dresser? Buy a banner and never hang it?

"Build it and they will come" only works when there's something to see, something to do. Something that loudly says, "Yes, we still exist!

Too many companies/artists/craftsmakers looking for the magic solution to their failing products/career. The Web != Lord & Savior.

Question for web pros: Is it unethical to take work if you know the client will be wasting her money? What if you try to persuade otherwise?

On Facebook, MySpace, and the future of the Web (with Christian Burns here)

FB/MS are the flavor of the month/year/generation. Users tire, grow older. New kids find cooler stuff. The circle of life.

These sites have value in terms of entertainment and adverts to youth market, but aren't for "grown-up" networking, pro functions.

MySpace/FB are not like Google/MS/Yahoo - they are niche (giant niche) sites. Biggest value is users, who'll migrate to new & better things.

We'll see them awhile longer, bc their communities are so large, but newer, more open & professional sites will replace 'em.

Exactly right. But are kids still using Geocities, though everybody did? Nope. The Next Gen already thinks MyS is lame.

Time will tell if MyS and FB will change/grow/remain relevant to the next wave of users, or if they'll die at the hand of the New/Cooler.

You might be able to tell from the above (even without reading what came between) that Vaspers agreed with me, and PeoriaPundit and Christian Burns didn’t. In spite of the disagreement (and the fact that I had never “spoken” to either of them), the conversations never turned nasty - not even coming close - and both ended quite amicably. In fact, if scheduling works out, the Burns, Vaspers, and I might have a conference call in the coming weeks (recorded and published in podcast form by Burns) to further discuss and debate the Facebook/MySpace issue, which would be pretty cool, and my first experience with something like that (not counting the couple times I deejayed for a local radio station while in high school).

I’m looking forward to it, and to more great stuff to come out of Twitter in the weeks and months to come. Slowly but surely, a growing community of users are building Twitter’s reputation as a great new platform for varied, deep, and civil conversation, debate, insight, and link-sharing - in stark contrast to the Twitter that’s so often mentioned and denigrated in the media these days. It’s better than they’d have you believe. Much, much more than frivolous cat-blogging.

I’d love for you to join us.

Movie Ratings And Market Conversations At Work, However Ungrammatical They May Be

My good friend Ben Johnson has a blog. It’s got a very low readership (not a judgment - just a comment for which the relevance will become clear below). Very low readership. Like fewer than five people. His blog has four blogs linking to it. Two are mine, and one is another of his - a site called Cultural Authority that will be extremely interesting if he ever decides to pick it up regularly. Read this blurb:

Deconstructing the contemporaneity of neo-dominant paradigmatic vocalities re: hyperhegemonic, phallogocentric, postcolonial consumerativity, including the aggressive disassociation of signifier and signified, via a gynocritical, reconstructionalist, antitextual/contextual/"textual" lens. Also...Foucauldian.

See, that sounds cool.

In any case, his blog, like most, is personal, and that is way awesome. Like I said, I read it regularly. That’s also why what happened to him this morning is so interesting.

Rewind just a little. Ben (who, while going to graduate school just so happens to work at a video store and is a major movie buff/geek) wrote a nice post about his desire for portability of movie ratings he’s provided to Netflix (1500 ratings!), Amazon (400) and Flixster (60). He’s right on regarding this, and it’d be great to see companies open up their data more. However, the best part of his post was his candid admission that Flixter’s site “is largely a disappointment” and that their Facebook widget is “about as disappointing as the regular Flixter website.” At this point I wondered what the heck Flixter might be, but was given several reasons for not caring to check: he didn’t link to it, and he (a trusted friend) said bad things about it. So, even though I’m savvy enough to have guessed its URL, I didn’t. Bleh - why in Zeus’ name would I?

But Ben contacted me this morning via GMail chat to tell me something crazy had happened: a founder of Flixster had actually commented on his post. I immediately clicked through from Google Reader to check it out. Here’s what “Joe from Flixster” said:

hey ben,

i am one of the founders of flixster - stumbled on your post.

1. Very curious to know why you found both our site and our facebook app a disappointment. What were/are you looking for?

2. FYI - we're happy to allow you to take your flixster ratings with you anywhere you go. Such is the value of being a free service - we think your ratings are yours and are happy to let you export them whther you want to subscribe to netflix for while, switch to BB, buy from amazon or iTunes or whatever else. Unfortunately, given their business model, those other services are probably less likely to see things that way...

You'll probably here more from us about this topic in the next year or two.

Best,
Joe

Never mind his barely-veiled swipe at some of the leading video services on the web - what’s notable is that Joe took the time to address the specific issues raised on Ben’s humble little web log. A quick Technorati search would have shown that Ben’s site might not be worth the time given its (relative lack of) authority, but he commented anyway. Why? Why would the founder of a site with (allegedly) 16,195,908 accounts write such a specific answer on such a tiny blog?

Because, it seems, he kinda gets it.

What’s it?

It is the fact that every last one of your users is sacred. It is the fact that word of mouth is not a tree falling in a forest. It is the fact that when it comes to internet, a single voice can start a tidal wave of noise. It is the fact that users and customers are real people who talk to one another and take each other’s words as gospel. It is a belief in the power of the web to make or break your business - for the viral to either be supremely beneficial, or supremely destructive. It is an understanding that just because Ben’s blog might not reach millions doesn’t mean that one of his readers’ blogs doesn’t (or that his readers’ blogs’ readers blogs won’t, or that his reade...you get the point).

So I checked out Flixster, after all. Here’s the deal:

Flixster is a community for movie fans of all shapes and sizes. Whether you are a die-hard horror fan or lover of romantic comedies (or both), Flixster is a place where you can find others who share your taste and through them discover new movies that you will love.

Only a year old, Flixster is already one of the largest movie sites on the web with over 10 million registered users and over 300 million movie ratings.

I didn’t sign up because it doesn’t seem like my thing. Social Network Overload, perhaps. But the point of all this is I looked. Joe took a chance - a tiny, risk-free, minute-long chance. Good for him - we need some more businesses to follow his lead. Eight years after The Cluetrain Manifesto, markets are still conversations. Don’t forget.

That said, I wish Joe all the best with Flixster - I’m just not sure how well they’re gonna do with a founder who misuses the word “here” when he means “hear.” Yeah, it’s the internet. But that doesn’t excuse sloppiness. Not if you want people to take you seriously.