Razvan Antonescu

Flickr has find an interesting strategy to capture the visitors that arrive to the website through Google Image Search. Each time you arrive at a photo page using Google, Flickr will provide a yellow note just below the search with the text:

We found 262,353 photos matching [keyword]. Click “search” above to see!

Also the search box is prefiled with the query.

All in one, a simple strategy that could boost the pageviews by a few percents.

Try it for yourself

I’ve been using Google’s Chrome as a default browser both at work and at home since it’s lunch. I was pretty aware of the fact that’s a beta product and that some additional stress is mandatory. But after 2 months I’m done. Switching back to Firefox.

Here are my main reasons:

1. Is 2008. No browser is an island anymore. I expect from my browser to be connected to web services and my browsers from different locations. Scared by bad PR Google has done no integration with its services (that’s if you don’t count Gears) and that’s a big down for me. Here is what Google could have done or at least offer the options for the users to enable/disable:

a) Browsing history. In IE / FF, if you have installed Google toolbar, Google keeps a record of your history online and makes that searchable from any point. Some might complain about privacy issues but considering my daily activities the gains are bigger then the looses

b) Bookmarks. Google has a pretty decent bookmarking service. Of course you can use the bookmarklet option but there’s no integration with the browser default bookmarking system. Kudos for Foxmarks on that.

2. Again is 2008. Every user has a wide range of browsing habits and patterns. You cannot make everybody happy and because of that you make your software extensible. FAIL. Maybe in time extensibility will be added and extensions will be created. But I think that’s a distant future we are talking about. Core extensions I missed during this period

a) Google Toolbar

b) Foxmarks

c) Stumbleupon

d) GTDInbox and Xoopit

e) Yahoo’s new Inquisitor (I wished for that from the moment I saw it available for Safari)

f) SEO for Firefox (DUHHHHH)

g) Twitterfox – this is the only app I use for Twitter. Usage pattern has decreased since using Chrome but that will be fixed from now

3. Plugins integration. That was one of the main causes of frustration and cursing. C’monnnnn is 2008 again. Make the god damn flash work. I’m depending on YouTube for my business and I’m a big fan of South Park, John Stewart and Colbert. Constant crashes (can’t remember if I ever played a clip without crashes), slow streaming and so on. Google Analytics is becoming unusable. And let’s not get to Silverlight that I need it for Live Mesh

4. Resources. Chrome is fast. Fast to lunch more precisely but that’s all. I was using DivxLand Media Subtitler that’s using my processor up to 99%. I cannot do anything on my PC and Chrome was dead. Not loading any page. Today I tried Firefox and works like a charm.

Conclusions

I won’t uninstall Chrome. But is not my default browser anymore. I’ll use it mainly for it’s incognito mode to login to multiple accounts without using all my available browsers (7 or 8 i think ). Perhaps in about 1 year Chrome will get better but so far Firefox fits all my working/entertainment/communication habits.

It seems like twitter is having his momentum right now, with more and more people joining. So, here is a quick tutorial on how to use it in order to accomplish the following goals:

• Bring constant traffic to your site
• Create an interactive and dedicated community

First of all, this quick guide doesn’t apply to any of the black hat projects that you’d might have. It simply doesn’t work this way.

You will need to have a site that:

• Is community oriented: this implies one or more of the following:
  • visitors can create accounts on your site
  • visitors can create content on your site
  • visitors can comment on the existing content
  • any other way of interaction between the visitors and your site
• Is not static: this implies that you have periodically fresh content (news/articles)

Using twitter for traffic and community has 2 ways:

1. The passive way. This is pretty straight forward. Create a twitter account, announce that on your site, make a link on the homepage or on your template, add your website to your twitter profile and start using twitter. That rest will follow. Slowly but steady.

2. The active way. This is what this post is about.

• First of all, start doing the steps from the passive way.
• Than use twitter for 1-2 weeks, periodically adding content
• Identify twitter users that might be interested in your site. Do that by searching in Google for: site:twitter.com [keyword]. Where the [keyword] represents the main keywords for your website. If you do that, you’ll get as results people that have used on their twits that keyword. Some of them have used them accidentally, but most of them will have a real interest in your topics.
• Make a list of all the profiles identified. From that list eliminate all the profiles that are dead (no longer updated) and start following the remaining ones. Many of them will reciprocate.
• Start interacting with the followed profiles, try to answer any conversations.
• Make periodical announcements of new content on your website and be active in answering any feedback.
• If you have an RSS feed for your site, for your own good don’t be an idiot and add that to your twitter account. Is one of the most annoying and lame behaviors and will soon result in people following you to use the block button

Well, that’s it. happy twitting and if you will use this mini guide, feel free to post in comments any results that you will get

Tonight I was playing with some YouTube features that I need for a web project. Those features are not very common for the vast majority of the users. I am talking here about playlists and custom players.

If you describe to a technical person those features, or even if you only name them, instantly they’ll understand what are they about and they’ll see great use in them. Unfortunately we, technical people, tend to forget that our frame of mind has nothing to do with the regular user. The regular user that comes in huge numbers and it’s our main revenue source. And by forgetting that, we overdevelop things that we like and by doing that we overdelay the launch of the product or we ignore the common features considering them insignificant.

The YouTube features I mentioned above work like total crap. The playlists never display the correct number of videos and the custom players never display all the videos and more than that, this morning were displaying other people playlists. Who the hell cares beside me and maybe a dozen other people. Youtube works well on what is suppsoed to do. Upload and play videos.

If you are in a control position, try explaining to the top management or your client that the fancy crap he needs are not worth any delay. Time is money and the markets are crowded. Release in small chunks and release often. Keep in mind that your products has a final target in the masses not in the elites. Screw the early adopters. Let them complain. If your unique, fancy (and useless most of the cases)  features are so important, the early adopters will wait for them.

When the new Gmail version was made available, lots of new features were announced  and than people started to point  to new ones. But behind the great fireworks some other small changes with deep impact were made.

Here is an example on how some small changes can lead to feature awarness.

A few nights ago, my girlfriend called me that she saw that Google added, to the compose screen, the option to create invites for Gcal. While I knew that this was an pretty old feature, I knew that something has changed but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Happily, you can switch between the old and new interface and than I saw it:

Gmail old interface:

Gmail new interface:

(click on thumbnails for the bigger pictures)

What really changed  so that feature become more vizible to the “regular” user:

• In the old version,  the link to create new event was placed on the far right of the screen. Most people don’t move their eyes so far so is practically invisible even though it’s in front of your eyes.
• Labeling. In the original version, the feature was labeled “” Add event info”. That basically doesn’t say anything to “regular” users. What event? It’s an freakin email. What info should I add?(those questions appeared in the rare case they spotted it). In the new version, the label says “Add event invitation”. This label is more clear and in plain view.

Those 2 small changes might appear as insignificant to most of the people. But I am willing to bet a lot that the spike in usage after the roll out was pretty huge.

So, summing it up. Just because you use the internet on a daily basis and develop web apps that doesn’t mean that those are going to be user friendly. Not even if you are a huge, popular company. Hiring  a team or an usability company, might not also guarantee your success but at least you have more chances than your competitors