Social Studies: It's the Interface, Stupid!

A report reveals numerous flaws in popular social networking sites' design for user experience--but also some good processes.

Social networking is a booming medium for online communication, especially among young adults, and therefore a potential gold mine for marketers who can connect to its users. But a new report from Forrester Research shows that even the most popular sites put obstacles in the way of people who wish to sign up and become part of the social networking community--specifically lack of privacy information, poor text legibility, and inefficient task flows.

In the report, "Social Networking Sites Need A Usability Boost," Forrester applied a modified version of its Web-site review methodology to evaluate five social networks--Facebook, Friendster, hi5, MySpace, and Tagged--in terms of how easy it was for a new user to create a profile. Ratings for each of 10 criteria range from -2 (severe failure) to +2 (best practices), leaving a final score between -20 and +20, with +10 considered a passing grade. None of the five sites achieved higher than +4 (Facebook), and the lowest was -5 (Friendster).

According to Forrester, the notable failure points included:

* Lack of privacy and security policies. Four out of the five sites failed to present links to privacy and security policies in context when asking users to provide personal information.
* Text that was difficult to read. Three out of the five sites failed to provide easily readable content and field labels.
* Inefficient task flows. Friendster and Tagged exhibited awkward sign-up processes, with Tagged achieving a severe failure score in this area. Tagged required the user to add contacts to the new profile from a personal email account, and pushed for additional personal information like home address and phone number.
* Poor error recovery. Tagged, Facebook, and MySpace all failed to present users with clear error messages that might have helped correct mistakes. Facebook and MySpace presented error messages on registration forms one at a time, forcing users through multiple attempts at submitting their information.


"Customer experience executives and site managers at social networks should take these scores to heart," writes report author Bruce Temkin, vice president and principal analyst for customer experience at Forrester. "While Gen Y consumers might enjoy fun experiences and seek out entertainment more than their elders, young adults want sites that are, first and foremost, easy to use."

Temkin says that there are two components to consider when discussing social networking sites' usability: the immersive experience and the directed experience. "The immersive experience is the reason people, especially kids, spend so much time on social networking sites," he says. In the Forrester paper, he writes, "For young adults, using social networking sites like Friendster and MySpace isn't just another activity to do online--for many, it is their life online. This is because their friends form the central point of their social networking activities, which revolve around communicating--and not media consumption."

The directed experience, on the other hand, is "using social networking for an explicit goal, like finding a friend who knows somebody in the Boston area who works for Microsoft and can get me a job," Temkin says. "A directed goal, like setting up a user profile, is basic to the function of social networking, and it's easier to apply standards and metrics to understand it."

Despite the overall negative evaluation Forrester levied on the social networking sites in its study, a handful of good scores emerged in individual criteria--at least for Facebook, which achieved the study's only four "+2" scores in the following categories:

* Are essential content and function given priority on the page?
* Does text formatting and layout support easy scanning?
* Are form fields and interactive elements placed logically on the page?
* Does site functionality provide clear feedback in response to user actions?

These lessons--both good and bad--can and should be taken to heart for professional communications as well. "According to TechCrunch, it's only a matter of time before Facebook meets the market need and improves its 'relationship' features and becomes more of a business platform," writes Paul Greenberg, author of the book CRM at the Speed of Light, on his blog, "PGreenblog." "What I find interesting is the anecdotal evidence supporting this. I find myself communicating with my business contacts more frequently with Facebook and, more importantly, they answer me a lot faster than either via email or via LinkedIn."

Greenberg also writes that he has "almost [four times] as many contacts on LinkedIn as I do on Facebook, but Facebook seems to do the most important 'business thing' for relationships better--break down the barriers so that the conversations are human. And that is a priceless business benefit."

Source:www.destinationcrm.com

The global face of social networking

A new report from comScore reveals that several of the major social networking sites have experienced dramatic growth over the past year, and the trend is global.

Social networking continues to rise in popularity with Internet users across the globe. Recent figures released by comScore reveal huge rises in the number of visitors to the largest of the social networks. What was once considered a fad now attracts audiences that put it in the mainstream.

"Typically we see that, whenever that happens, advertisers will follow the eyeballs,” said comScore’s EVP Jack Flanagan, via Clickz.

Tagged.com experienced the highest rate of growth, up 774 percent, visitors rose from 1,506 last June, to 13,167 this June. During the same period Facebook achieved a 270 percent growth rate, Bebo 172 percent and MySpace 72 percent. MySpace attracted almost 114 million visitors during June, 2007.

The popularity of a social networking site appears to be dependent on the audience's geographic region. Both MySpace and Facebook attract predominately North American audiences, around two-thirds according to comScore.

Bebo is the choice of European social networkers with 63 percent of its users coming from that region and Friendster attracts 89 percent of its audience from Asia-Pacific.

Orkut is the darling of users in the Asia-Pacific and Latin American countries, according to the report.

"Literally hundreds of millions of people around the world are visiting social networking sites each month and many are doing so on a daily basis," said Bob Ivins, ComScore’s EVP of international markets.

"It would appear that social networking is not a fad but rather an activity that is being woven into the very fabric of the global internet," added Ivins.

Source:www.bizreport.com

Social networking sites enjoy massive visitor surge

Online measurement firm comScore has released a report detailing the dramatic rise of social networking sites.

Sites such as Facebook and MySpace are increasingly taking internet advertising share from Yahoo and other market leaders, and the new study shows that these established giants may truly have something to fear.

MySpace received 114 million unique visitors in June 2007, an increase of 72 per cent compared to the 66 million who visited during June last year.

Facebook performed even better, attracting 52 million unique visitors, which was a 270 per cent increase on the 14 million who logged in during June 2006.

Other sites performing well included Hi5, Friendster, Orkut, Bebo and Tagged. The latter logged a whopping 774 per cent increase in visitors, while Bebo's numbers grew by 172 per cent.

"During the past year, social networking has really taken off globally," said comScore's Bob Ivins.

"Literally hundreds of millions of people around the world are visiting social networking sites each month and many are doing so on a daily basis. It would appear that social networking is not a fad but rather an activity that is being woven into the very fabric of the global internet."

Source:www.directtrafficmedia.co.uk