Comments on: Social Networking by Design

By: Paul

Paul — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 20:25:34 +0000

Thank you Siong! I use LinkedIn myself, but it doesn’t really offer the same type of social features that sites like Facebook and MySpace do - so I didn’t include it.

At a later time I may do a review of LinkedIn, and how to use it to bring in extra business if you’re freelancing!

By: Siong

Siong — Thu, 31 May 2007 22:54:38 +0000

Hi Paul,

This is an excellent roundup. Social networking is indeed huge. Facebook does have good usability, but (and you probably already know this) now that it will be open to third party applications, it will be interesting to see how this progresses / deteriorates. Also, there is one more that I thought you might find interesting: LinkedIn, used for professional networking. I would love to hear what your review of this site is.

Thanks.

Siong

By: Paul

Paul — Tue, 29 May 2007 19:44:13 +0000

Paul: It’s funny… Some people are all in favour of the ability to customise everything and make it unreadable, but I am not. I’ve marked well-designed sites down if their user profiles are *really* bad.

Ludovic: Britster should be in Private Beta by the end of June, with a view to the Public Beta being completed by the end of July. Our timeline has been shifted back a little, following a rewrite of the core code.

By: Ludovic

Ludovic — Tue, 29 May 2007 19:15:40 +0000

I totally agree with you. Facebook is certainly the best website {the only one I use really} Also, will Britster beta be launched this month as planned ?

By: Paul B

Paul B — Tue, 29 May 2007 08:09:16 +0000

Hey Paul,

Having visited the “main stream” contenders (the facebooks, myspace, wayn, live spaces, yahoo, and faceparty’s of the web) I can honestly say, that they each have their flaws (myspace is the too much customisation of a user’s page (leary colouring anyone?)….

With that in mind, I think that with your experience of the web, and your (sometimes overly) critical eye - I feel that you’ve banged the nail square on the head!

I don’t think you’ve missed any (as I mentioned before the one’s I’ve mentioned tend to be the main-stream players) with some of the sites you mentioned I hadn’t even come across!

Personally (and take this with a pinch of salt if you must) you got the descriptions bang on, maybe a little conservative on some of the scores (can’t exactly remember which ones, but I do seem to remember you marking a site down even tho it was fairly well designed……

Anyhoo, enough rambling……

By: Paul

Paul — Tue, 29 May 2007 01:48:43 +0000

Thanks Asgeir! It’s certainly turning out to be time-consuming, but I really believe that it will be a massive success in the long-term.

By: Asgeir Hoem

Asgeir Hoem — Mon, 28 May 2007 21:27:07 +0000

Hi Paul,
You’ve got an exciting project going on!

Of the networks you list, the only one I’ve used is Facebook (and MySpace, for something like six hours). I’ve seen many of the others, though, and I completely agree with what you’re saying. Facebook is amazingly clean and tidy considering the amount of contents and functions it holds. I have no idea what the guys over at MySpace are thinking, really.

It is going to be interesting to see how Britster turns out.