Olga Smyslova

olga@smyslova.com

Social Search and Discovery:

Why search anyway?

What are the motivations of search engines users?

Users of search engines look for…

• Information and services – global, general knowledge, same for everybody

• Opinions, references, referrals – personal or local • Recreation and discovery

Online search …

Replaced the books, libraries, sometimes even experts, but

…it cannot replace a friend you can ask for …

• A referral• An opinion• Or just help

YouTube videos aggregator:

Methods:

• Discount Usability studies (live and remote)

• Questionnaires (mostly on usage of social services)

• 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, StumbleUpon, 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

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

LiveJournal: posting a picture

Blogger: posting a video

Reddit: link submission

Series of A/B testing: ratings

Series of A/B testing: Rating tools

Stars vs. sliders

Picture size

Analysis of comments:

Log analysis

Registered users statistics: sliders vs. votes usage

Users’ Metaphors: 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)

Heat maps: users want to see like-minded people

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... :)

The final version

• 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

Jaanix Creators:

• Joseph Petviashvili

• Jonathan Christensen

• Koen Vos

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.

Thank you!

Questions? Comments?