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Joshua Porter谈社交应用及行业发展形势

发布时间:2011-07-22 18:03:09 Tags:,,

游戏邦注:本文作者是Joshua Porter,文章内容系其接受Christine Perfetti采访的第二部分内容,访谈前半部分请参考Joshua Porter谈如何吸引用户和培养热心用户

设计师是如何发现社交应用无法有效运作的内容?

首先就要明确“有效运作”的含义。作品失败原因多种多样,但通常意味着网站无法达到预期目标。从理论上看,所有设计团队都有系列重要参数,这些关乎作品/服务成败。我发现,若未清楚把握重要参数,设计团队会逐步失去关注焦点,无法继续推出续作和更新内容。

设计师在网络发展初期就开始依靠参数。我们最初接触的参数是点击数(游戏邦注:这用来衡量网页服务器的点击数量)。遗憾的是,此点击数量几乎没有意义,因为囊括各种点击数据,包括图像、JavaScript和其他文件,无法真正提供有效信息。但我们后来的检验参数要复杂得多。

很多设计团队近来着眼探索用户粘性衡量途径。这些参数包括回访量和访问用户停留时间。这些参数对公司来说都具有重要指示意义。

例如,谷歌希望用户每次使用搜索引擎只消耗费少量时间。他们希望用户能够访问网站,找到所需内容,然后离开。而另一方面,Facebook希望用户能够尽可能停留于网站之中,这样他们就能够收集到更多有关用户的信息,展示更多广告。网站停留时间标准因公司商业目标变化而变化。

在设计应用过程中,设计团队需参考3-4个核心参数判定应用成败和公司发展状况。若这些参数获得提高,说明公司处在健康发展之中。

若所创建的互动活动完全不考虑核心参数,那么你就会陷入这样的境地:用户访问你的网站,但不符合你预期的方式。这就是为什么曾经风靡一时的免费应用如今沦为免费试用品。设计团队发现,如今很多用户都免费使用应用,这对公司而言是一大损失。

在你的书《Designing for the Social Web》中,你建议设计团队要充分利用漏斗分析原理分析社交应用失败元素。这是个怎样的分析模式?

在各生命周期阶段参照某些参数发现网站或应用有待提高的地方很重要。漏斗分析原理是个发现问题的好方式。其能够展示网站在各生命周期的用户情况,从感兴趣到着迷其中。

设计师可将网站描绘成漏斗,顶部是感兴趣用户,底部是着迷于应用的粉丝。

例如,在最初对应用感兴趣的用户中,只有小部分人会首次用过便决定继续使用。在初次使用产品的用户中,只有少数用户会经常使用。在那些经常使用应用的用户中,只有很小一部分访问者会成为忠实粉丝。通过观察用户在漏掉何处流失,你便能够优化应用。

但有做过漏斗分析的人都知道,用户除穿梭系列画面逐步前进外,还会开展其他各种活动。他们多次访问,会跳过某些内容,发送邮件,他们进行各种多渠道交流……这使你难以判断作品的失误之处。

这就是我们开发Performable(游戏邦注:这是个基于活动的分析工具)的原因所在。基于活动说明工具分析所有玩家活动,而非仅限于上述4步骤漏斗中所发生的内容。我们需关注用户逐步积累的丰富经验。

performable from startupsuccesspodcast-com

performable from startupsuccesspodcast-com

你是否发现社交应用正逐步与时俱进?

社交应用无疑处在不断发展中。我发现,过去几年来用户已开始真正融入这些应用中。用户如今已非常适应这些应用的理念。用户3年前还不知道什么是消息动态,没人知道这是什么东西。

我发现这个领域发生很大变化。例如,很多应用开始瞄准地理定位元素。Foursquare和Gowalla之类的地理定位应用确实取得显著成绩。这些应用旨在消除线上、线下差异性。

所有社交应用都开始步入移动平台。用户不论身处何地都能使用这些应用。随着iPad之类设备的兴起,这些趋势日益凸显。移动平台呈迅猛发展之势。

所以这两大趋势(游戏邦注:社交化和移动化)推动应用领域快速发展。

MySpace是元老级热门社交网站之一,但后来逐步偏离轨道。是怎么回事?

有多个原因。MySpace是美国首个热门社交网站。网站成为荣登各大新闻版面,用户开始讨论隐私话题。MySpace将社交网站带入大众视野,成千上万用户开始使用该网站。

随后出现Facebook,整个发展势头就发生变化。我们很难清楚说明其中转变原因,但我认为编程是Facebook的主要筹码。从编程角度看,Facebook运作非常顺利。他们频繁更新内容,网站总能很快进行调试。Facebook呈高效运作状态,而MySpace却存在种种问题。

从设计角度看,Facebook相比MySpace更加干净利落,更具连贯性。

Social Network from aizhaiwang.com

Social Network from aizhaiwang.com

从社交应用设计角度看,MySpace的主题页面算是不错理念,因为用户能够享有独特身份。你认为这个方案为何最终走向失败?

虽然MySpace用户能够将页面主题化,但我认为这有损应用设计可用性,因为这导致用户很难阅读页面。虽然这促使MySpace用户能够表达自我,但并非资料阅读者的最佳选择。

是的,主题定位对身份来说很重要。我觉得从某种程度看,这是MySpace的一项重要功能(游戏邦注:至少在早期),因为用户喜欢通过变更其个人资料凸显个性。能够个性化MySpace确实是一大优势,但Facebook开始崭露头角,发展势头迅猛。就同好友比较而言,个性化元素是个有趣而重要的内容(需要指出的是,MySpace依然实力雄厚,并非真正陷入失败境地,而非成为第二大社交网站)。

那么Facebook何以异军突起?我想最大原因是他们发现什么因素对用户来说最重要,在编程方面比MySpace略胜一筹。

例如,Facebook 2007年植入消息动态元素,这是个活跃的信息流。若要细说网站功能,非此莫属。Facebook设计师发现用户会阅读好友发布的内容,如链接、信息和图片,此流动平台是呈现这些元素的好渠道,因为它会根据时间排列内容。虽然MySpace促使用户能够以静态方式变更个人资料背景和内容,但用户更新内容不会即时呈现。用户需自行发现好友页面的变革内容。而Facebook消息动态就把变更信息以突出方式呈现,用户粘性获得显著提高。因此MySpace主题元素相比Facebook消息动态略逊一筹,内容分享和状态更新对用户来说比个性化个人资料更重要。

但其他社交网站也处在不断发展之中。Twitter现今已加入图片功能,这将促使其更上一层楼。我认为未来会更多社交应用瞄准特定活动群体的个性化功能。例如,在社交网络Dribbble中,玩家会分享其当前工作任务。PatientsLikeMe是瞄准患病群体的社交网络,Ravelry是瞄准毛线编织群体的社交网络。在这些服务中,玩家都着迷于某项活动,保持高度活跃性。这些网络瞄准的是小群体,所以它们鲜少出现在各大新闻版面当中。(本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,如需转载请联系:游戏邦

Creating Engaged and Passionate Users

by Joshua Porter

Note: the following is part 2 of an interview I did with my good friend Christine Perfetti on Creating Engaged and Passionate Users. You should read Part 1 first.

How can designers pinpoint areas of their social application that aren’t working?

Well, first there needs to be agreement on what “working” means. There are lots of ways something can fail to work…but usually it means that the site isn’t doing something that it’s supposed to. And ideally every design team has a list of their most important metrics…those things that really matter to the success of their product/service. I’ve found that without a clear picture of which metrics are important, design teams tend to lose focus over time and fail to continually iterate and improve.

Designers have relied on metrics since the beginning of the web. We first started with metrics such as hit counters that measured the number of hits to the web server. Unfortunately, the hits were typically meaningless because they included hits to pretty much anything, including images, JavaScript, and other files, failing to provide any real insight into what was happening. As time has gone on, however, the metrics we examine have become much more sophisticated.

The latest focus for many design teams is to understand ways to measure user engagement. These metrics include the number of return visits and the average time on site for visitors. These metrics have important implications for your business.

For example, Google wants people to spend as little time as possible each time they interact with their search engine. They want people to come to the site, find what they want, and leave. On the other hand, Facebook wants people to spend more time on their site, so they can gather more data about visitors and expose them to more ads. The time on site success metric is radically different based on the specific site’s business goals.

When building an application, it’s essential for design teams to identify 3-4 core metrics to assess the success of the application and the health of the business. If these metrics go up, it’s a sign your business is healthy.

If you just build interactions without respect to core metrics, you can get into a situation where people use your web site — but not in the way you intended. This is why free applications that were once all the rage are now being downgraded to free trials. Design teams found that so many people were using the applications without paying and it was a huge drain on a business.

In your book, Designing for the Social Web, you recommend that design teams take advantage of the funnel analysis to uncover areas of their social application that aren’t working well. How does this analysis work?

It’s really important to have solid metrics at each stage of the lifecycle to uncover where a site or application has an opportunity to improve. A funnel analysis is a good way to find out what’s broken. It can show you how well your site moves people along the stages of the lifecycle, from Interested to Passionate.

Designers can picture their site as a funnel, where at the top they have everyone who is interested in the application and at the bottom is everyone who is passionate about the software.

For example, of those people who are initially interested in your application, only a subset of them will decide to ever actually use your application for the first time. Of the people who use the application for the first time, only some will use the application regularly. Of those regular users, only a small percentage of visitors will become passionate users. By examining where users drop off in the funnel, you can pinpoint opportunities for improvement on your web site.

However, if you’ve ever done funnel analysis you know that people do all sorts of things besides progress step-by-step through a series of screens. They visit multiple times, they skip around, they email you, they do all sorts of multi-channel communication, etc. This makes it more difficult to determine what’s wrong with your funnel.

As an aside, this is why we’ve built what we’ve built at Performable, which is an events-based analytics tool. Events-based means that the tools analyzes all actions of users, not just the ones that happen in a pre-specified 4-step funnel. This is necessary to truly capture the rich experience that your users are having over time.

Have you found that social applications are evolving over time?

Social applications have definitely been evolving. Over the last few years, I’ve seen that people have really embraced these applications. Users are now used to the concept of social applications. Three years ago, people had no idea what a News Feed was. Now everyone knows what it is.

I’ve seen a lot of changes. For example, many applications are now focusing on location. Location applications, such as Foursquare and Gowalla, are doing some really interesting things. These apps are essentially erasing the difference between being online and offline.

All of the social applications are also going mobile. People are using them everywhere. With devices like the iPad taking off, those trends are only going to accelerate. It’s insane how fast mobile is growing.

So those two trends, social and mobile, have accelerated everything.

MySpace was one of the first really popular social web sites, but has since become less relevant. What happened?

A couple of things happened. MySpace was the first national social network that caught the attention of everyone. We’d hear about it on the news and people started talking about privacy. MySpace really brought social networks to the general public and millions of people were using it.

Then Facebook came along and the momentum shifted. It’s difficult to pinpoint the exact reason for the shift, but I think engineering was Facebook’s big win. From an engineering standpoint, Facebook executes extremely well. They roll out changes quickly and the site always seems to work. Facebook’s uptime was excellent, whereas MySpace had a lot of problems.

From a design perspective, Facebook has always been much cleaner and much more consistent than MySpace.

From a social design perspective, it could be argued that MySpace’s themed pages was a good idea because it was offering users a unique identity. Why do you think this approach failed?

While users on MySpace were allowed to theme their pages, I believe this actually hurt the usability of the application’s design because it allowed people to make very difficult to read (and use) pages. Even though it allowed MySpace users to express themselves how they wanted, it wasn’t the best choice for the readers of those profiles.

So yes, theming a profile is important for identity. And I think on some level, this was an important feature for MySpace, at least early on, because people liked to be able to change their profile to reflect their personality. But the ability to personalize MySpace was trumped b/c Facebook rose to prominence and had more momentum…personalization is interesting but unimportant when compared to where your friends are. (And, it should be pointed out that MySpace is still gigantic and has not really failed but rather become the 2nd biggest social network.)

So, why did Facebook rise to prominence? I think the big reason is that they recognized what was most important to people and then out-engineered MySpace in building their platform.

For example, in 2007, Facebook implemented the News Feed, an activity stream. If I had to point to a single feature this would be it (or perhaps photos…) The designers at Facebook realized people were coming for their friend’s content, such as links, messages, and photos and that a stream was a much better way to display these things because it ordered things by time. While MySpace gave users the ability to statically change the background and text of their profiles, there was less sense of immediacy when people made updates. Viewers still had to go and find what was updated on their friends pages. The Facebook News Feed made these changes front and center, and set a new bar in engagement. Thus the themes in MySpace were trumped by Facebook’s realization that content sharing and status updates were much more important to users than profile personalization.

But other social networks are growing. Twitter is adding photos now and this will take them to the next level. And I think in the future more social applications will focus on specialized features for specific activity groups. For example, Dribbble is a social network where designers share what they’re working on. You have services like PatientsLikeMe, which is a social network for people living with diseases, and Ravelry, a social network for folks who knit and crochet. These services have people who are as passionate about some specific activity and are extremely active within that world (maybe moreso than on the big networks), these networks just happen to be smaller populations so they aren’t in the news everyday. (Source:bokardo


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