An infinite number of redesigns

Today was my last day at work, for the year. Not quite sure when my actual last day at work is but judging by the state of various economies, you do wonder. Is it my imagination or have shops been quieter than usual? I loathe shopping during the festive season though the last three trips haven’t been too bad; not too much traffic and easy to park, that can’t be good. Despite all this, and a few other things besides, I shall do what I can to enjoy because, when it comes down to it, why worry about that which you can’t influence? Christmas will soon be upon us, my daughter is becoming more and more uncontrollable as the day nears; and I’m becoming more and more nervous because I haven’t bought any presents.

I’ve been too busy redesigning the blog, the ultimate exercise for pleasing myself - perhaps I should rephrase that? Based on my own ratio of items read to items subscribed, I estimate I have 0.2 regular readers; New Year’s resolution - let’s see if we can boost that up to half of one before the arrival of summer! Not so much the content; I have been swayed by the “menu bar” approach of Twitter, Facebook and Google. It’s clear they influence each other - I often mistake the (currently) black Google bar adorning so many of their products, for the Twitter bar - and I’m pretty sure Facebook fixed their blue bar (rather than have it scroll with the page) not long after Google+ was released. So now I have my own grey (appropriately enough) menu bar, fixed at the top with a lovely shadow effect when you scroll the content “underneath” - my 0.2 regular readers are going to love that.

I really like it, but then I really liked the last look - right up to the point where I was sick of it. It’s minimal and promotes the content, though at the expense of a “visual identity” - the large image occupying so much screen space at the top of many a blog. It’s interesting therefore to find the new Facebook timeline design - for which you can sign up early - merges the two; underneath the menu bar is the user selected cover image. It’s the visual element distinguishing one profile from another, and it’s huge. I’m not sure I’d go that far but it’s enough to make me think again.

Inside Facebook

When Mark met Emily

Well it was the BBC, so it was less inside Facebook and more rehash Facebook. There was one amusing (to myself) moment where we were told, based on an expected $100 billion flotation, next year Mark Zuckerberg could be “worth” $17 billion; and I thought “only $17 billion?” - I genuinely thought it would be more. It started with a brief “what is Facebook” introduction, threw in a little bit of history but mostly involved Emily Maitlis asking penetrating questions such as “Where does Mark Zuckerberg sit?” It turns out he sits with everyone else; the poor guy can’t even afford his own office. It was a slight documentary, not quite infomercial, I was impressed with the size of other companies - some with hundreds of employees - living entirely within the “Facebook eco-system”, and there was some criticism.

The most difficult question was to one Facebook executive faced with the complaint that when Emily clicks “Like” on a brand, she may not want to be part of that brand’s advertising on a friend’s page. Hmmm... long pause... and a magnificent recovery waffle about the “nature of advertising”. I’d have gone with “then don’t click on ‘Like’” and risked the wrath of Emily. I’ll bet she's marvellous when she’s angry.

Plus one

I continue to tinker. I still find myself posting more on Twitter, and possibly even Facebook, but I think this because I did so using ChromeDeck (TweetDeck) rather than the sites themselves. In other words it’s via their respective API, and I’d imagine Google+ will have its own soon enough. Then it will become interesting as, for example, currently on the blog I show my last Tweet; will I switch to showing my last Google+ post - or rather the first 140 characters (or however many I choose) of my last post?

“Share” (when it becomes externally available) and “+1” from Google+ are analogous to “Share” and “Like” from Facebook, though I’m still getting confused as the two social networks handle the data differently. Facebook “Share” and “Like” are added to the single activity ‘stream’ shown for that user, whereas Google separates the “+1” information into a separate tab; my own “+1”s don’t get shown in my stream, I don’t yet know if they show in the streams of those who have me in their ‘circle’. If not it seems a bit odd - I think I must be missing something. Semantically though, “+1” works much better than “Like”, having a broader scope for use; I liked it enough to put the button on my blog.

Getting social

Two good things happened yesterday; the problem with the house alarm was sorted, and courtesy of Mickey I received a Google+ invite. I should probably take a thorough look first, but whilst I’ve got the urge I may as well post now, haphazard though the result may be. At first sight it looks cleaner, though this is in part the ‘lick of paint’ affect, more space and less clutter; placed on another tab I flicked between Google+ and Facebook and not surprisingly they’re somewhat similar. In functional terms however, Google+ wins hands down.

Privacy on Facebook has always been a bugbear. My own concern is less with how much is public (it is a social network after all) but their strange inability to match privacy settings with the layout; the sections on the configuration page are as if for a different version of the UI, it’s that bad. Google+ on the other hand, allows me to configure the privacy in-line with the layout, and combined with Circles it becomes not only easier but more flexible. For example, my telephone details are only visible to people in my “Family” circle.

Circles are how you organise your contacts; Google+ defaults with “Friends”, “Family”, “Acquaintances” and “Following”, but you can create your own. It’s intuitive, you can tell they’ve spent a lot of time on the UI and it’s at the core of everything; who I share to and what I look at, the default is ‘Public’ but it’s very easy to change. I also like that the share function is plumbed into the Google toolbar at the top; Gmail, Documents and Picasa (soon to be re-branded Google Photos), to name a few, have got it so far.

Hangouts look like fun, though I'm not sure how I'll use them, and I can’t quite see how Sparks fits. With Google Buzz... at the moment my Buzz is a Twitter reader; once Google+ is fully featured I expect it to disappear. And one of those features not yet (but surely soon) available will be some kind of search function, combined with the possible use of hash tags, though with tags I’m not so convinced; of course I'm basing this on how I personally use Twitter.

What I’d really like is a level of integration - or shared functionality - with my blog, which given it’s hosted on Blogger (soon to be re-branded Google Blogs) may one day be possible. I read a post where one brave soul had decided to move their blog to Google+, and if you’re only concerned with content I can see how that might work; but blogs aren’t only content, they provide a personalised look and feel, your own brand as it were. Essentially I’d like to be able to share my blog content on Google+, and to share the Google+ comments within my blog; Google+ and my blog would thus become different frameworks for the same blog data, and my blog data one source to my Google+ stream. I wonder how long I’ll have to wait.

Hail, Zuckerberg!

From Augustus, first emperor of Rome, to Zuckerberg, first emperor of the social network. Is it coincidence that Mark Zuckerberg skipped studying for “Art in the time of Augustus” in order to build Facebook? Yes, of course it is, and a Google search reveals that Kari O’Brien (to name one) has already noticed the similarity in an earlier version of her blog, goddammit!