Sunday, April 27, 2008

Facebook Ad System: Go Clippers

Facebook displays advertisements within its News Feed, listing an ad as if it was something personal, like your friends' quiz scores.

Facebook says that it collects "rich" user info, and thus can target ads. Sounds fun, but there is a glitch. The system gives greater weight to user attributes than to the advertisement object, producing irrelevant ads. Here is today's News post--with an ad to see the Los Angeles Clippers basketball team. It is true that I live in LA, and enjoy basketball. But the most important fact regarding the Clippers is that the NBA is in playoff season, and the Clippers did not make it to the post-season (by far).


Oh, and by the way, I have no interest in the Clippers.

Monday, April 21, 2008

Bank Checks Hieroglyphics

Bank checks have very hard to read digits to represent the Routing Number and Account Number. There is a character that resembles a digit that is used as a divider, but it is not clear what starts and stops on either end. The check number sometimes appears as the second item, and sometimes as the third item.

When you must provide a routing number and account number, the requesting institution (or phisher) provides a picture to inform you of how to find the info on a check. It is very condescending and ineffective. We know where the info should be. The instructions should be about Translation, not location.

It's best to keep handy this info (Routing # and Check #), extracted from a statement, welcome letter. Otherwise, you could be frustrated in an attempt to decipher the strange arrangement as printed by your Check Provider.

Monday, April 14, 2008

Pandora Could Sell Me Something

I respect how the online music service Pandora is hands-off regarding pushing music sales. It offers links to buy each song in your stations. But it doesn't offer package deals.

Pandora collects a lot of information. Its user interface does not reflect the degree to which it could display the song information or your history with the song. You can view your Bookmarked Songs. As I mentioned in an earlier post, Pandora (wrongly) allows you to "re-bookmark" a song, rather than notifying you of the encore. It could not only alert you of the repeated bookmark, but suggest you buy it -- "You've bookmarked that song twice already. You must really dig it! We can offer to you along with these 8 other tracks for just $5.89." The other tracks could be related/suggested based on the song attributes, or could be from your list of favorites.

Pandora could generate packages and deals programatically and display on your homepage. "Click here to Purchase ALL your Bookmarked Songs for 70% off!"

Come on, Pandora. We're all rooting for you to succeed. Get smart with your marketing. You're doing a great job tying songs together; now sell them to us.

Friday, April 4, 2008

Facebooks Puts Enemies in Your Face

** Updated 6/6/2008 ***
~~~ Facebook has added the functionality called for in this post. ~~~~~~

Facebook puts a panel in your Home page "People You May Know." It randomly displays 3 of the multitudes who share a connection with you, and links to a page that shows all such friends of friends.

For each of these people, there are action buttons such as "Add to Friends", "Send Message." But there is no button "Make Disappear." Some of these friends of friends can be Enemies: or at least, major dope bags. I'm not asking that they be smited from the face of the Earth, only that their face be wiped out from the face of my Facebook. There should be a button: "Don't Show this Person Again" or "Remove From List (Always)."

Facebook has shown a commitment to allow users to customize their experience. But for every feature and connection-promoter, there are more implications regarding privacy and peace of mind. To make this right, Facebook should allow for Hiding Content/Function Segments from the Home Page just as it allows you to Remove/Collapse boxes from your profile. Secondly, it should always allow the ability to Block an Individual: not just to prevent that person from viewing your profile, but to avoid any chance of you having to see their face.

eVite: terrible UI

I had to send an eVite for a friend yesterday. Oh gosh, it is a terrible user experience. My next report will spell out the troubles.