Getting around the new Facebook Lightbox feature for photos

February 12, 2011 By 2 Comments

Facebook has been rolling out a new method for viewing photos, which now brings up a lightbox with the selected photo and lets you scroll through without losing your place on the site. It’s OK for browsing, but one flaw is that it doesn’t allow you to access the original photo, and quite often shows a smaller version than the original, which is a bit of a pain.

Dan Thornton Facebook Lightbox

So how can you get around the automatic lightbox feature? Simple – just locate the image in the album you want and right click on it to open in a new window. That will show you the original and use the old way of viewing photos on Facebook.

Filed Under: Facebook, social networks Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Users dissatisfied with social networks – are you surprised?

July 22, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Apparently American consumers surveyed in the 2010 American Customer Survey Index ranked Facebook lower than any other business in its category, but it still managed to beat Myspace by a point. Facebook scored 64 out of 100, Myspace scored 63 out of 100, and by comparison Google scored 80 (A drop of 7 points on last year’s score). (h/t Mashable).

The question is whether anyone is surprised:

a) That social networks can lead to dissatisfaction?

or

b) That social networks are still growing massively despite such dissatisfaction?

(Note – I’m not picking out any specific network here – I’m talking about everything from a traditional forum to the big social networks).

Firstly, social networks in themselves can be immensely frustrating and problematic – knowing how they work, putting up with them when they crash, receiving messages about problems from an anonymous staff member with no route to reply or dispute are just some of the things which can annoy social network users.

As someone who has used social networks for many years, I’ve become accustomed to the fact that quite often you can try for months to get a response on a business-related issue. Sometimes even when you want to spend some budget with the company in question.

But it’s even worse if you’re a ‘normal’ user – when you signed up to the Terms and Conditions, you agreed your account could be deleted, and unless the media or a prominent tech blogger takes up your case, there’s no real recourse.

Secondly, social networks are fantastic and will continue to grow and attract new users, even amongst those frustrated with them. And it’s all because of a simple selling point – other people. Even if a social network is clunky and frustrating to use, you’ll continue to use it if there’s a critical mass of your friends, family, contacts and information.

Unfortunately Twitter wasn’t included, as so many people encounter it via a 3rd party client. And I didn’t see any mention of LinkedIn. Suffice to say, most of the main social networks do a reasonable job until something goes wrong – then you’re at the mercy of a large company which has scaled quickly to deal with massive demand.

Interestingly, Wikipedia topped the Social Media category with a score of 77. In News and Information, FoxNews.com debuted with a score of 82, which is the highest ever for any news site. There’s a little more info at ForeSee Results.

Filed Under: social networks Tagged With: , , , , , ,

One potential USP for Diaspora

July 3, 2010 By Leave a Comment

I’ve been following the progress of Diaspora since it started – in the midst of Facebook’s last privacy problems, four young programmers at NYU asked for funding to create ‘a privacy aware, personally-controlled, do-it-all distributed open source social network’.

And they got a lot more funding than they asked for – before they’d written a line of code, their Kickstarter page raised over $200,000. And they’d originally set a goal of $10,000. Backers even include Facebook’s founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg!

They’ve just posted their one month update, and things seem to be going well. But in the midst of writing a post on 140char, something struck me.

The big worry about Diaspora is that even if it’s finished, available, and a great service – not enough people will necessarily care enough about privacy etc to sign up and get critical mass to it.

So what about taking a different route.

Advertisers and marketers are increasingly using social networks as a primary route for reaching consumers effectively.

Revenue generation is increasing for the social networks and companies using them.

Customer service and CRM are following along slightly behind.

So why not make the unique selling point to the average user something slightly different – why not make Diaspora the first social network to serve as a platform for Vendor Relationship Management?

With Diaspora, not only could you control all your own data from a privacy point of view, but you could control all your own data from a VRM point of view – selecting what you might want to release to a company, and how long you’ll allow it, whilst it’s relevant.

It could be the social network which doesn’t let you ‘Like’ a company – but lets you control your relationship with all the companies you’d like to do business with. And with the open source and distributed, open approach to data, it could be made easy for consumers and companies to hook up using Diaspora as a platform and channel, rather than having to be within the social network itself.

Maybe that would give both movements more leverage?

Filed Under: open source, social networks, Vendor Relationship Management Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Google Me – quick thoughts for and against…

June 30, 2010 By 2 Comments

So the rumours are building about the ‘Facebook killer’ being worked on at Google. And whenever there are big rumours, the blogosphere rushes to comment. For example, Mike Arrington argues Google should clone Facebook, Kim-Mai Cutler argues the opposite.

My own thoughts are mixed, but I’ve had a couple of ideas which I don’t seem to have seen elsewhere:

For Google:

  • Android. 5 million activations a month, a focus on mobile first (as said by Eric Schmidt), and working across mobiles and the merging tablet market (in terms of tablets now getting mainstream coverage and adoption post iPad).
  • Data knowledge. They might not have completely aced social search and the social graph yet, but they’re used to working with humungous data sets.
  • Understanding the need for users to own their own data, as shown by the ‘Data Liberation Front’
  • Adsense – allowing users to instantly monetise with a proven model.
  • Does it have to beat Facebook? With Google Me and the rumoured Google Music, perhaps picking up ex-Myspace users is a better first step. If it can pick up people leaving Myspace and Facebook, social networks become a two horse race, with Google in the game.
  • Location – combining social graph with location-based apps and great mapping software.

Against Google:

  • Previous approaches haven’t resulted in great design and usability.
  • Fragmented approach with Google Profiles, Google Buzz, Googlemail, Orkut, etc.
  • Orkut has had success in some territories, but is up against Facebook and a global reach of 500 million +
  • Remember their interest in Jaiku as a Twitter rival?
  • Google Buzz being shoe-horned into Googlemail, and the privacy uproar it created.
  • Mainstream social network users aren’t showing a huge global response to privacy concerns yet.

That’s pretty much a summary so far. When it comes to whether or not Google can create something that will succeed, none of us can possibly tell until we see a product actually launching. But what we can see is that Google has some significant advantages in the market which it has so far failed to utilise for Google Buzz, Orkut or Jaiku, but which could transform any new product.

Filed Under: social networks Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,
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