It’s called The Social Agreement, and it’s kind of a crowd-sourced code of conduct for social network users. I’m not sure if it will gain any traction, but it seemed like an interesting experiment.

From the “about” section:

There’s been a lot of buzz (seriously, no pun intended) around Google+ lately. It seems there are a lot of people who are fed up with their Facebook experience, and want to jump ship to another network. Aside from privacy issues, people are complaining about the sheer volume of random cruft and spammyness in their news stream, but is Facebook as a site really to blame?

When I first started using Google+, I marveled at how clean and uncluttered it was compared to my network stream on Facebook. I thought to myself “This will be great until all those damned people start showing up.” Ehh, wait, what? Yeah, I know, without other people, it’s not much of a social network, and really, if I wanted a completely clean page, I wouldn’t friend people at all. Still, you can’t deny you’ve thought the same thing once or twice (you can admit it… it’s okay).

I began to realize that most of the issues people were having with Facebook had less to do with Facebook as a piece of software, and more to do with the way people were using that software. Google+ has made several strides in giving users the ability to sort through their feeds, but even so, we’ll eventually face the same issues with any social networking site, because of us… the users.

The key to solving these problems, at least in my opinion, comes from serious reflection on how we use, and often abuse, our networks. By asking ourselves what we feel is wrong with our collective social experience, we can begin to come to some kind of agreement on what the problems are, and what exactly to do about them. Make no mistake, I’m as guilty as anyone, and break at least 4 of these guidelines regularly, but as Rocky Balboa said after defeating Ivan Drago: “If I can change… yooz can change!”

 

Well, official only in the sense that I’ve deemed it so, for whatever that’s worth.

In my increasingly tech filled world, one of the few things I’ve never been able to fully adopt is the social networking experience. This is mainly due to the abysmal signal to noise ratio that’s prevalent within each network, with streams filled with “gearing up for the weekend!” and “look how cute my cat is, he’s wearing a tiny hat!” etc. Every time I tried to engage with, say, Facebook, for example, I found it was an awful lot of work to sort through all that data to find the rare kernel of something I was actually interested in. With Google+, the ability to assign friends, acquaintances, and bloggers into circles allows you to focus on the streams that interest you at any given time. This coupled with the ability to post updates to selected groups among your network, the tight integration with Android (as well as other Google services), I’ve got a workable central hub for my internetty social interactions. Honestly, Google+ may finally be a network I can fulfill my informal pledge to consistently post updates to my friends.

Oh yeah, the interface is pretty slick too.

It’s not so much that it’s unattractive (it is), or that it’s buggy (it is) it’s more about usability, or the lack thereof.

Now, I should first point out that I’m not opposed to redesigns in general. There’s always a few cranks that look at a redesign of a popular site and say: “Arrgh I don’t like change naaagh!” etc. I am not one of these cranks (at least not in this case). Having said that, my first reaction to the new interface did involve some “arrghs!” and “naaaghs!” not because of what was there, but what wasn’t there. In streamlining the interface, they’ve removed some key features that made searching through their instant catalog a good experience; Sorting by rating, year, etc, and the ability to see previously seen / rated titles> They’ve also decided to hide the user aggregate ratings (one of their much touted features) behind a hover state, choosing to display as little information as possible to the user. Sure, you can simply hover over the title-less movie cover to reveal this information, but don’t click it, unless you want to instantly start downloading a film you know nothing about. All of these changes culminate in a user experience that is not intuitive in the least, making it difficult for the casual user to understand, while also having the added ‘benefit’ of forcing more advanced users to perform extra clicks, or, in some cases, not have the featured they’d commonly used before. In all cases, it’s a ui that doesn’t help the new user, and irritates more seasoned users. This along with the juddery implementation of JavaScript to slide the new, massive, dvd cover images, makes the experience jarring as well as useless.

Now you may think that all the absurdities I’ve outlined above were enough to rankle me into an internet rant, but the thing that really drew me into full on rage (such that it is) was Netflix’ reaction to the groundswell of negative feedback they received over the update. Their response was essentially: “We tested this, the complainers are wrong, you’ll get used to it, stfu.” Now, they never did mention who exactly they tested this with, whether it was a test market of actual users, a focus group, or their own weird arbitrary testing method. I’d be very interested in knowing the specifics of this test, and the actual results of it, but I’m fairly certain we’ll never see it.

At the end of the day (but not today) I’m sure I’ll get used to the changes, as Netflix helpfully suggested I do, or someone will come along and use the api to make a ui that does what the official ui does not (help you find something worth watching). Already there are browser plugs that simulate the old Netflix instant experience (but those will only work for so long). Right now, however, I’m saddened and angry at the way Netflix has gone from being the golden boy of streaming media, to another company that makes it explicitly clear that they simply don’t care about you, nor your opinions.

Alright, I’ve just finished yet another redesign. This time I not only moved the web design content back in, but I also made it the focus of the site. I had originally eliminated the blog, as I seem to only post when I do a redesign, but seeing as how that happens all the damned time, maybe a blog isn’t so useless to me after all.

More stuff soon(er or later).

Yup, I re-designed the page… again.

I decided to do a stripped down page, removing all the comments, meta tags, categories, etc. As you’ve seen, I’ve also moved the portfolio to the front page, as the blog was becoming more and more of an afterthought. I’ve removed the web design stuff as well, considering most of that information has a home on my M60 page.

I’m not sure how long this design will last. I’m already thinking about building another theme for it. Mainly because I’ve discovered some nifty jQuery (yeah, I know) scripts that I want to play with. I’m also not a big fan of the way the color scheme effects the readability of the blog. I think the colors, while balanced overall, don’t lend themselves well to text in terms of contrast. I know I’m the one that created this color scheme, but I’m man enough to admit when something I created kinda sucks. I’d also like to re-implement comments, but use Facebook comments instead of Disqus, considering the majority of interaction was coming from posting art on my Facebook page.

Speaking of Facebook, I should really spend more time updating my social networks. I started using Hootsuite and Seesmic to help me do that very thing, but it still seems to fall off my daily radar. It’s odd to me how interested I am in the concept and functionality of these networks, and how much time I spend reading about them and working with their api’s and such, yet I can’t find it in me to actually use the services consistently. I suppose it has something to do with the sense of information over-saturation I get whenever I look at my wall. It just looks like more data I have to sort through.

…I digress.

Update: I adjusted the colors of the content blocks in the blog… I still don’t like it.

I just upgraded my WordPress installation and a few sundry plugins in preparation for the design section revamp. It took me a while to do this, as my previous experience in dealing with major WordPress updates has been, in a word, harrowing. This time, the upgrade was completely painless, and almost pleasant in an “I have to do it so I may as well enjoy it” kinda way. Took me about 6 minutes total. All in all. pretty sweet. I haven’t had a chance to monkey around with the new features, but I’m anxious to see how they’ve handled the MU integration… not so much for this site, but for another project I’m about to embark on. Marginal excitement abounds!

Also, I did some new art, including a sketch or two, that I’ll be adding today or tomorrow… so there’s that.

Over the next few days, I’ll be rolling the ScreamingHotAwesome.com website into this one. Yeah, I know I just spent the better part of a week building the current design, but it’s just not doing what I need it to do. The Screaming design is much better equipped to organize the various and differing bits of content that I need to display (because I built it for just that). Although it bothers me a bit that I’m pretty much ditching yet another web magazine attempt, I find I just don’t have the time to create content for one. Rolling the Screaming site, as well as Vanderlin into my personal site, will allow all the content I’d be creating for those three sites to be combined into one personally branded site. Now that I’m getting more into information design over web design, it just makes sense to apply my own advice to my own work.

That’s the theory anyway… we’ll see how that works out for me

… for the rest of today and probably tomorrow. There will be some weirdness.

With the holidays upon us again, I’m not making any damned money, and I have nothing to do… so I rebuilt this page. I may add some new features over the next couple of days as well.

On a sad note, my laptop of 6 years finally went to silicon heaven, so if anyone out there wants a blog set up (I’ll even host it), I’m ready to trade my services for a 1GHz or above system (an ugly old tower is fine, I just need the psu, processor, and ram).

Anyone? Anyone?

Well folks, the new M60 site is almost a go. I still have a few things on the front page to work out, but it’s all coming along nicely. One thing to note, this site might be down for a day or so as I move to the new M60 servers, so if my site doesn’t load for you tomorrow, it doesn’t mean that I’m dead.

Anyway, Have a look at what’s been devouring my time as of late here.

-J.