Olga Smyslova

olga@smyslova.com

Social Search and Discovery:

The evolution of recommendation engine

YouTube videos aggregator:

• View the videos and vote ↑ Jaa or ↓ Nix• Get videos to view based on your interests, likes, and

dislikes

Usability Methods:

• Discount Usability studies (live and remote, via Skype)

• Questionnaires (mostly on usage of social services and new Jaanix features)

• Getting as much feedback as possible through forums and discussion groups

• Conceptual studies and exploration: what users like to use and why

Target audience (same as Digg, Del.icio.us, Reddit)

• Internet-savvy (spending 3-4 hours per day online)

• Relatively young (up to their 40-ies)

• Highly connected

• Strong desire to be up to date

• Mostly male

Users feedback: it looks nice, but…

• I have no idea what to do with it, other than watching videos

• Why some of the videos move to another place, while others don’t?

• What is it all about?

Further approximations

• A separate page for registration: 5 topics/tags for users to choose to find relevant content

• Tabs (pictures, videos, links)

• Tag cloud • Search on site

Jaanix prototypes: Style

Jaanix prototypes: events

Users needs:

• To find new, interesting stories on the web

• To be able to reach their favorite content

• To share content with friends and discuss it

• To feel social, engaged, in the flow

Social networking experience feedback

• I start my day with my friend feed… After reading a funny story I feel like I met with my friends – now I am up and running

• It is like a cup of tea or going to a great party

• I feel very social and ready for adventures… worse than that – I am ready for my daily boring routines

Interviews showed:

Highly connected study participants use social networking sites as their creative labs or gatherings around water cooler.

They get inspiration, ideas, support, peer recognition online and share their findings there.

Jaanix: users’ feedback

• No need to click and choose topics I want to see something interesting right now

• OwnershipWhere my favorite videos will go? Can I keep my own links

there? • Easy posting process

I want to grab the good stuff I see and post it right away, no hassle with links, copy-and-paste…

Posting process: one click

Compare with LiveJournal: posting a picture

Compare with Blogger: posting a video

Compare with Reddit: link submission

Next Jaanix incarnation:

• Tag cloud transformed into categories (still tags) with sliders:

• All types of content together – links, video, and pictures

• Name of a person submitting a link

• Jaanix magic numbers: ratings

Series of A/B testing: Rating tools

Stars vs. sliders

Picture size

Analysis of comments:

• Whenever possible• Not taken as granted,

but a stimulus for more research

Log analysis

• February – a great month for Jaanix

• Each wide discussion on any service or forum sends crowds to check on Jaanix

• Some of them stay with us…

Registered users statistics: sliders vs. votes usage

Three equally divided groups:

• Some visitors use sliders to play with Jaanix content

• Some like to vote on submissions and see what Jaanix can suggest them

• Some like both tools

Communication needs: users’ metaphors on using Jaanix

• Watching a movie alone

• Spending time in an aquarium. There are beautiful fish and interesting people around, but you cannot reach them

• “Cold” service, not sure that there are real people behind the scenes

The social network was born

• Most users appealed to a social network or forum while discussing Jaanix (RSS feed, Livejournal, Reddit)

• Users wanted to see _who_ submitted a link or a video

• Communication needs: the ability to discuss the link posted by others.

Visitor numbers:

• Return visitors (no accounts) – 7%

• Convertion rate (percent of users creating accounts after visiting Jaanix) - 1%

• Number of active users (posting at least once a week) – about 200

• Number of Jaanix users – about 2000 (visiting Jaanix at least once a week)

The last experiment

Heat maps usage:

Link “People” was on site before the functionality itself

Users showed interest, clicking on the link

The functionality was added as users “requested”

The final version of Jaanix:

• Social bookmarking• Personalized recommendations• Micro-blogging• Comments • The ability to find like-minded people• Export to Deli.cio.us and Twitter • Keeping spammers out: the accounts were not

suspended, but nobody could see their posts

Some more feedback

• The combination of Jaanix and illumio – a hosted service that found relevant material in RSS feeds – would be brilliant.   For now, I'll use both; illumio to sort feeds, and Jaanix to repost and comment on interesting articles. 

• It hadn't reached critical mass for a while, but recently I've found a lot of absolutely fascinating articles on things relative to my interests. Reading the internet is fun again!

• I have now played with this site for about the past hour and I’m sorry, I still don’t get it.

And more…

• I like how, after several hours, there is no mention under "politics" of Bhutto's assassination and one of the top three articles is a week old DailyKos humor piece

• I kept scrolling down casually, thinking: "wow, there are a lot of links on the main page because I keep scrolling and I have yet to hit the bottom.“

• Reddit by people who can write software. • Chasing the footer links down the page right now

trying to read the faq and about sections... :)

Lessons learned:

• Jaanix remained a black box users could not understand.

• RSS import: let users bring their luggage with them

• Keeping the existent networks is vital for the users along with the ability to comment others’ posts.

Jaanix Creators:

• Joseph Petviashvili

• Jonathan Christensen

• Koen Vos

Thank you!

Questions? Comments?