I am a huge fan of simplicity. The simpler it is to use the happier I am with the experience. However, I have also stated that making something seem like less does not necessarily mean you are making it simpler. There have been a couple of great articles this month discussing the role of simplicity in web design and application design.
What I am taking away from these articles is that less isn’t always more and simple doesn’t always mean non-complex. One of the more interesting quotes came from Joel Spolsky’s piece on Simplicity.
Devotees of simplicity will bring up 37signals and the Apple iPod as anecdotal proof that Simple Sells. I would argue that in both these cases, success is a result of a combination of things: building an audience, evangelism, clean and spare design, emotional appeal, aesthetics, fast response time, direct and instant user feedback, program models which correspond to the user model resulting in high usability, and putting the user in control, all of which are features of one sort, in the sense that they are benefits that customers like and pay for, but none of which can really be described as “simplicity.” For example, the iPod has the feature of being beautiful, which the Creative Zen Ultra Nomad Jukebox doesn’t have, so I’ll take an iPod, please. In the case of the iPod, the way beauty is provided happens to be through a clean and simple design, but it doesn’t have to be. The Hummer is aesthetically appealing precisely because it’s ugly and complicated.
I would love to hear 37signals’ response to this since while reading these articles I myself was thinking of the iPod and 37signals as examples that seemed to defy what these experts were talking about. We can’t give every user what they want, but maybe not giving all of them a little something of what they want is even worse.
2006 was the year of Web 2.0 design and pretty much that type of design got old real quick. Below I have listed the Top 7 Freshest Designs in my mind that I have come across this year and although these kind of lists can easily be argued, I try to provide you with enough reasoning behind my decisions.
- Cuban Council
Why choose a site that wasn’t even designed in 2006 as a fresh design for 2006? In a year where we saw a return of the one-page layout, I still find that Cuban Council’s timeless design outdoes all-newcomers in not only providing a rewarding experience, but also a helpful one. Everything you need to know about them is on one page and it doesn’t seem too long or overbearing on the user. Instead the site draws you in even deeper and you begin to wish that there was more to it, not because you need to see more, but because you want to see more.
- Suicide Girls
Another site done by the guys over at Cuban Council and to me is the best community-designed site around. Mike and I were going over the site yesterday and its amazing the attention to detail the design has received. Every section of the site is designed with a purpose and if the naked pictures of women and great community weren’t enough to draw you in, then the design should finish the job.
Be sure to checkout my previous article on SG, The Genius of Suicide Girls.
- N.Design Studio
Taking just a glance at the layout you can see there is nothing special about it. A simple two-column layout which has become the defacto layout of all sites since blogs hit it big. What you get though when going through the site is to see the work of a true artist. There are talented designers and then there are talented artists and rarely are we subjected to both on one site at once. I can only hope we see a bit more imaginations going wild on the web in ‘07 with regards to illustrations.
- The Morning News
Not a design that will garner many design awards, but that does not take away from the fact that it deserves some attention. The Morning News design lets you know one thing as a reader and that is the site is all about content. The design enhances the experience and stays out of the way and this is very refreshing in a period where people associate successful content sites with the amount of ad space they are selling.
- UX Magazine
Like The Morning News, UX Magazine is focused on just giving you content. The homepage design is a brilliant use of a grid system along with a flexible-width layout. The layout adjusts depending on the size your browser window without taking away anything from the homepage. Although this type of system puts a stranglehold on how you must present your content and what type of content can fit within the site, I still think it is a brilliant use of different design elements.
- Veerle
I almost started off this sentence with “one of the best female designers around”, but quickly realized that is my male mind kicking in and not giving Veerle her due respect. She is one of the best designers on the web and her site is one of the top five design blogs on the web in my opinion. Nothing beats great content and a great design and no other site in my mind epitomizes this relationship more than her’s.
- Shaun Inman
Never one to shy away from experimentation, Inman gives us what we most want from a blog…the content. In a perfect world there are no ads, but we don’t live in that kind of world yet for the time being we can escape to the land of make believe when visiting Inman’s site. A mix of links and articles the flow is never broken and you will never have a problem reading what is on the page.
Here’s to 2007 and a whole new batch of fresh designs.
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We all do it in one form or another. We love to talk about the competition and what they are doing wrong. Hell, it might even be another blogger that you just don’t like, but in one form or another we talk about them. Is there every a good way to talk about your competition?
Internally I’m sure we are all aware that we shouldn’t ignore the competition, but that doesn’t mean that externally we should show that we acknowledge them. For 9rules our competition is considered to be other content networks and blog networks so if I write an entry like the previous one it can be taken as writing about the competition.
Is it out of line though to talk about an industry and what you can see being improved with it? In most cases when I see people talk about their competition its comes across as a hate-filled diatribe and that only gives off the wrong impression to your readers. However, I know many people are reluctant to throw around praise because they feel as though they shouldn’t give the competition anymore exposure.
I understand that every circumstance is different, but how do you handle talking about the competition?
Blog Networks have a problem. Do you go for that one hit site or do you go for the niche categories and fill out the long tail? At the beginning it looked as though Weblogs, Inc. was going to fill out the long tail, but as writers come and go (many times because of the Overjustification Effect) the smaller sites were left to wither and die, while the more mainstream sites caught on and grew. Leading the charge was Engadget and due to its success it was able to start moving into the long tail of technology with with Engadget HD and Engadget Mobile.
Following this was the expansion of the mini-Joystiq network with WoW Insider, DS Fanboy, Xbox 360 Fanboy and others. All of the content on these mini-sites could easily appear on Joystiq, but that causes a couple of problems.
- There is a lot of content hitting the Joystiq frontpage already and this would multiply that by a large amount causing people either to just give up on trying to stay updated or simply miss some items completely unless you configure the feed to include the 50 latest items.
- Lots of people just don’t care about all video game news and just want specific genres.
The mini-network addresses this and does so very well. In this instance, WIN has started with the big site approach and then moved on to the Long Tail. However, does the Pareto Principle apply in this case and if so can we learn from it?
The Pareto principle (also known as the 80-20 rule, the law of the vital few, and the principle of factor sparsity) states that for many phenomena, 80% of the consequences stem from 20% of the causes.
I’m sure we have all heard of this rule in one form another and looking at the traffic numbers for the Joystiq network it seems their approach has been paying off. Over time Joystiq became part of the elite 20% with regards to traffic and reach and therefore reaching down further into the Long Tail began to make sense because Joystiq was able to push the traffic to those sites. Not many networks have this advantage and the only other one that comes to mind is Gawker Media.
Instead what we are seeing from many blog networks is rapid growth in all areas and simply believing they can play the numbers game. If you have enough sites eventually the traffic will build up to a level that allows for a critical mass of traffic sharing right? Well, not really, but it is easy to think that. Instead, what you get is a lot of little sites that can’t even begin to cover the Long Tail and although the common perception is that covering most of the Long Tail is a rewarding effort, simply being part of it is not enough.
So what do you do if you are a content network? It is definitely easier to start a new site instead of trying to make one a hit, but I think making one a hit is definitely more valuable than adding 50 new sites. You need to become part of the 20% of the Long Tail then you can worry about the rest. How does this apply to 9rules? It’s a bit different in my mind, because in some areas we do have the largest sites, while in others we might just cover a good portion of the Long Tail. However, we also have the 9rules site itself, which helps change things a bit.
Just serving up a reminder that I have a couple of spots left for the 2007 Ad Project. You are able to give a $1,000 deposit to secure your spot and the remaining balance by February 2007. What $2,000 means in smaller details:
- $166.67 per month.
- $38.46 per week.
- $5.47 per day.
- $0.22 per hour.
- Really small number per minute.
- Even smaller number per second.
If you are looking to reach an educated audience that hates me, but loves you then have a look see.
In January, I wrote about the five companies that I felt would fail this year and since the year is almost up I figured it would be a great time to look at them again to see what they have done.
When I say “fail” I am not thinking they will disappear (although they might), but fail in the sense of what they are trying to achieve and categories they are trying to keep.
- Microsoft.
When will Vista come out? That was the question that many technologists have been asking for the past three years and the answer is clear now: 2007. The early reports of Vista have been mostly positive from what I have read, but not because it is better than OS X (be sure to checkout David Pogue’s video review). It is because it is better than Windows XP, which is something you would hope for anyways. However, with the amount of delays it has gone through it has surely tarnished Microsoft’s image and given Apple a bit of an edge with certain people and although they will continue to dominate the desktop market for a while longer, their hold on the world is continuously slipping.
The Zune also launched and to put it simply is a failure. It’s not even compatible with Vista and having a cool feature such as wireless music sharing is pointless if no one around you is using a Zune as well. The iPod killer became its own killer shortly after launch.
Microsoft continues to make billions, but in my mind they failed. They failed to re-establish themselves as an important company. Their moves always seem to be 10 steps behind the competition and in this fast-paced web world we are beginning to see that money only goes so far and quality and execution seem to go further. The one plus I give them this year is the XBOX 360. Kudos.
- Creative.
They never gained any ground on Apple, although they have been releasing great products this year. They only own one part of the music market, while Apple owns the whole vertical. Hard to beat that.
- Google.
Google definitely proved me wrong this year.
- Stock doesn’t slow down.
- Google Reader released and in my eyes is the best web-based RSS reader available.
- Buys YouTube, which was a genius purchase. Yes, I said it was a genius purchase.
- A number of other acquisitions that have only strengthened their diversity.
- There are reports that Orkut has surpassed MySpace in total traffic.
It has been a very good year for Google.
- Six Apart.
I have not been kind to Six Apart this year at all. First I put them on the 5 companies that will fail list and then I place them on the Top 10 Web 2.0 Losers list. But then Vox showed up and they hit a homerun with this one.
Vox truly is your space on the web where you can share whatever you want with family and friends and keep it just between family and friends. It has a great design and is easy to play with. TypePad and LiveJournal remain strong and although MovableType is dead in the water (I don’t care what you say), Vox puts them over the failure category and makes 2006 a successful year for them. High five to Anil.
- Newspapers
Continue to lose their grip of reader’s attention. I don’t have the answer for them to turn things around, but I hope they find it.
So in my eyes I got three out of five correct from my January list. Not bad, but not great. Props to Google and Six Apart for proving me wrong and I wish them continued success in 2007. To the rest of the companies I wish them luck as well, they will need it.
In November, I wrote a Note over at 9rules about the new all-Flash MTV.com site and how much I loved it. To me it was a great example of a Flash site done right. During the web standards movement it was blasphemy to even consider any type of site done in Flash and my thoughts on this were:
People tend to think that because of the great web standards movement that every site is meant for the great CSS/XHTML movement. We all know that every site is different and that you have to apply the technology that the site needs. In this case, I don’t see a problem at all with an all-Flash site. MTV is an entertainment and interactive brand and this site gives its users the chances to do that.
Now you might go to the site and scoff at having to wait for it to load, but the wait time isn’t that bad on a broadband connection and once you are inside things run pretty smoothly. If you are addicted to MTV and music news and features the site doesn’t disappoint and gives you plenty of options to go through. For me the Flash fits the function of the site. MTV isn’t looking for search engines hits to their sites so the indexing is not an issue. They are simply looking to entertain.
If the Flash doesn’t do it for you then you can use the XHTML version by clicking the link in the lower-right corner. That version is also nicely done and was designed by Mr. Cederholm. I don’t think more and more sites should make the move towards Flash, but I do think a lot more sites can find better uses for it instead of ignoring it all together. If people are really moving away from TV to the web as all the reports say then the ones who haven’t are more than likely waiting for the web to be just as entertaining and useful to them as television.
Unlike sites of the late 90’s and early 21st century, Flash usage on MTV isn’t what makes the site. The design itself is spectacular (love the grid) and the Flash offers a great complement to the design. They weren’t using Flash just to use it, it serves a purpose.
When I think of new Web 2.0 sites springing about the only example of Flash usage I could think of involves video players and honestly couldn’t think of any other site that would benefit from Flash usage, but my thinking is small. Are there sites out there that could benefit from a bit of Flash usage and not just from an entertainment perspective?
The site isn’t perfect and a couple of things that could be improved:
- Loading times. I visited the site on a fast connection so I was able to get to the glory quickly and so on a slower connection I had the patience to wait. However, I’m not sure that will work with people who are trying to take a peek at the site initially from a slow connection. Maybe on the loading splash page offer a link to the xhtml site so users have the option to bypass the Flash.
- RSS feeds. I know the intended audience might not use them at all, but there is still no reason to not give the people the option to know when your site updates. Of course this is a problem for a Flash site since there are no permalinks. Anyone have a solution for this?
- Preferences. I prefer to view the site in video mode because I love to sit back and watch the music videos, but I don’t like having to wait for the site to load and then click the video version and wait for that to load. Give me my version during the first loading.
In November I wrote a piece titled Traffic is a Metric, Nothing More, which explored the different ways people view traffic and how other metrics easily trump the traffic one. However, in this fast-paced VC type of world traffic is really the only measurement investors have to go by and so obviously that is the one they are going to use. Advertisers use traffic as a metric because they want to know how many people are going to see their ads, but why do VCs find the metric to be so special? I think it is because it is magical.
Yes, I said I think traffic is magical.
What made me think of this was the news that Glam Media had raised an astonishing $18.5 million in Series C funding (that means it’s their third round of funding, which that fact alone amazes me). If you don’t know much about Glam Media go have a look at the site and let me know what you think. In a sense, they are very similar to 9rules and Federated Media in that they have content sites in their Network that they don’t own (9rules) and sell adspace for those sites (Federated Media).
Now from experience I can tell you that it doesn’t require that much money to run an operation like this and after going through the Glam site, which isn’t that badly designed, you have to hope that they have some television channel in the works along with opening up a couple of stores across the country to spend all of this money. In any case, the basis behind the investment seems to be the traffic numbers that they throw around.
Glam Media reaches over 7 million global unique visitors per month and is a top 10 women’s property, according to comScore Media Metrix October 2006 reports.
If you read the comments and do some investigating of your own you will find that the number of 7 million is derived from the traffic across the whole network which consists of over 200 sites. On their site though you get the idea that all the visitors are hitting their site and now the logo claims 8 million visitors. Whether the investors know these things is unknown, but what person wouldn’t light up if you told them you ran a site that reached over 8 million people a month?
The problem with traffic being the sole metric is that it doesn’t tell us much of what the world really thinks. I know the mindshare of 9rules is much larger than the actual traffic, but to an investor the latter is more important, but to us and our future the former is what we have always strived for with the feeling that traffic will follow. In the comments there are some fashion bloggers discussing how they have never even heard of Glam before and I find it interesting because they say they are pretty well-known themselves in the industry. If the people in the industry don’t know about you can you expect regular people to have any awareness that your site even exists?
I think it is cool that Glam got so much money and hope that they put it to good use, but the mind of the investor will always leave me confused. That is the reason I think traffic is magical, because you can make up any number you want and magically money appears. When people ask where you got those numbers from be honest and tell them: from your top hat.
For more information on the Glam investment checkout Venture Beat which reports that in total they have received over $30 million in investments. Stunning.
Disclaimer: There seems to be a trend with people adding disclaimers when they talk about competition and I guess you can say Glam is competition to 9rules (we all need it right?), but I wanted to inform everyone that I am writing about Glam not because I am interested in woman’s fashion, but because my nickname in elementary school was “Glam”. They had a whole song for me and everything. The Glam Man!
If you were anywhere on the web this year you should be well aware of who Amanda Congdon is and the whole fiasco with Rocketboom. A couple of weeks ago there was news that Amanda had signed a deal with ABC News to do a video blog for them, which seems mightily impressive and to be honest, I was very curious to see how it would turn out. I applauded ABC for seeing an opportunity to tackle a new generation and figured there was no wrong that they could do…
Wrong.
I’m not quite sure how to link to the first episode since it is a popup, but here is the site and if you view it this week you should catch it. Before reading any further I suggest you go over to take a look so you can have your own unbiased perspective on things.
But she is awesome.
Many of Amanda’s fans argued that when she left Rocketboom it would tumble because she was the talent. It seems that they were wrong and that Rocketboom has continued on successfully and from what I hear more than a couple people feel that the new host is more talented than Amanda. So that left Amanda to prove that she just wasn’t a Rocketboom wonder and actually had some talent of her own.
Now let us not mistake a geek’s lust for women who talk to them and have cute figures with talent. I will ignore the quality of her acting skills this paragraph (no diversity) and let’s see what happens when an old school media institution (ABC) tries to latch on to the new flow of the web. Besides messing up by putting the show in a popup box and having no comments or trackbacks immediately apparent (uploading video responses does not count), the show is the exact same as Rocketboom.
It’s almost expected for ABC to make the blunders stated above, but I wouldn’t expect a person with the experience of Amanda to allow such things to happen. I guess though if you are dealing with a site that has millions of viewers you have more room for mistakes, but this show doesn’t cater to the people who watch ABC News Primetime with Tom Brokaw (or whoever is on the show, admittedly I have no idea) and so how exactly is this supposed to work out?
If I wanted to keep up with Amanda at ABC News do I have to continuously visit her site and hope that she updates it whenever she pushes out a new show? There is a certain expectation with video blogs and definitely an expectation when a large company like ABC produces a show and I don’t think either party is meeting these expectations.
To ABC: Again, I know it is easy to slap something on your website and push your large amount of traffic to it and call it a success, but being part of the web crowd those things just don’t slide. Unclutter the page, make a RSS feed apparent, at the very least add trackbacks so some discussion and community can form around the show and if you are going to act cool be cool. Faking it is just weak.
Honestly, I would’ve created a new site for this.
To Amanda: Congrats on the gig, but why stick with the whole Rocketboom routine? Maybe the idea was completely your’s in the first place, but it was done on Rocketboom and you are just taking it to another place. Is this supposed to be Amanda Congdon on ABCNews.com or Rocketboom on ABCNews.com? I know you have aspirations of being an actress, but already I’m beginning to put you in the category of Screech and Urkel, personalities that are stuck and have no chance of trying anything new. I don’t wish that same fate on you.
Honestly, I would’ve stayed independent for this.
I am by no means a logo designer (or any designer at all), but everyone knows I love quality design and I was thinking that it would be really nice to have a cool logo for this site, but I have no ideas. I know the name itself “dump” doesn’t necessarily evoke the greatest of imagery in people’s minds and I think that is where I get stuck. So I am reaching out to you and asking if you could share some ideas for a logo.
I will more than likely end up butchering your ideas in a whatever graphics program I decide to use, but at least that’s a step in the right direction. If you could also throw out some ideas for typefaces for the logos letters that would rock as well.
So today and this week take the time to ignore the rest of the work you have and help me out. Let’s have some fun.
