social search concept in jaanix1
TRANSCRIPT
Why search anyway?
What are the motivations of search engines users?
Users of search engines look for…
• Information and services – global, general knowledge, same for everybody
• Opinions, references, referrals – personal or local • Recreation and discovery
Online search …
Replaced the books, libraries, sometimes even experts, but
…it cannot replace a friend you can ask for …
• A referral• An opinion• Or just help
YouTube videos aggregator:
Methods:
• Discount Usability studies (live and remote)
• Questionnaires (mostly on usage of social services)
• Getting as much feedback as possible through forums and discussion groups
• Conceptual studies and exploration: what users like to use and why
Target audience (same as Digg, Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, Reddit)
• Internet-savvy (spending 3-4 hours per day online)
• Relatively young (up to their 40-ies)
• Highly connected
• Strong desire to be up to date
• Mostly male
Users feedback: it looks nice, but…
• I have no idea what to do with it, other than watching videos
• Why some of the videos move to another place, while others don’t?
• What is it all about?
Further approximations
• A separate page for registration: 5 topics/tags for users to choose to find relevant content
• Tabs (pictures, videos, links)
• Tag cloud • Search on site
Jaanix prototypes: Style
Jaanix prototypes: events
Users needs:
• To find new, interesting stories on the web
• To be able to reach their favorite content
• To share content with friends and discuss it
• To feel social, engaged, in the flow
Social networking experience feedback
• I start my day with my friend feed… After reading a funny story I feel like I met with my friends – now I am up and running
• It is like a cup of tea or going to a great party
• I feel very social and ready for adventures… worse than that – I am ready for my daily boring routines
Jaanix: users’ feedback
• No need to click and choose topics I want to see something interesting right now
• OwnershipWhere my favorite videos will go? Can I keep my own links
there? • Easy posting process
I want to grab the good stuff I see and post it right away, no hassle with links, copy-and-paste…
Posting process: one click
LiveJournal: posting a picture
Blogger: posting a video
Reddit: link submission
Series of A/B testing: ratings
Series of A/B testing: Rating tools
Stars vs. sliders
Picture size
Analysis of comments:
Log analysis
Registered users statistics: sliders vs. votes usage
Users’ Metaphors: using Jaanix
• Watching a movie alone
• Spending time in an aquarium. There are beautiful fish and interesting people around, but you cannot reach them
• “Cold” service, not sure that there are real people behind the scenes
The social network was born
• Most users appealed to a social network or forum while discussing Jaanix (RSS feed, Livejournal, Reddit)
• Users wanted to see _who_ submitted a link or a video
• Communication needs: the ability to discuss the link posted by others.
Visitor numbers:
• Return visitors (no accounts) – 7%
• Convertion rate (percent of users creating accounts after visiting Jaanix) - 1%
• Number of active users (posting at least once a week) – about 200
• Number of Jaanix users – about 2000 (visiting Jaanix at least once a week)
Heat maps: users want to see like-minded people
Some more feedback
• The combination of Jaanix and illumio – a hosted service that found relevant material in RSS feeds – would be brilliant. For now, I'll use both; illumio to sort feeds, and Jaanix to repost and comment on interesting articles.
• It hadn't reached critical mass for a while, but recently I've found a lot of absolutely fascinating articles on things relative to my interests. Reading the internet is fun again!
• I have now played with this site for about the past hour and I’m sorry, I still don’t get it.
And more…
• I like how, after several hours, there is no mention under "politics" of Bhutto's assassination and one of the top three articles is a week old DailyKos humor piece
• I kept scrolling down casually, thinking: "wow, there are a lot of links on the main page because I keep scrolling and I have yet to hit the bottom.“
• Reddit by people who can write software. • Chasing the footer links down the page right now
trying to read the faq and about sections... :)
The final version
• Social bookmarking• Personalized recommendations• Micro-blogging• Comments • The ability to find like-minded people• Export to Deli.cio.us and Twitter • Keeping spammers out: the accounts were not
suspended, but nobody could see their posts
Jaanix Creators:
• Joseph Petviashvili
• Jonathan Christensen
• Koen Vos
Lessons learned:
• Jaanix remained a black box users could not understand.
• RSS import: let users bring their luggage with them
• Keeping the existent networks is vital for the users along with the ability to comment others’ posts.
Thank you!
Questions? Comments?