On Mar 20, 2009, at 11:30 AM, Luke Tucker wrote:
On Mar 20, 2009, at 10:40 AM, Christopher Patterson wrote:This actually dovetails with an idea I've been kicking around - I'd love to use the "star" mechanism as a way to draw users deeper into the site.Specifically, I think it'd be nice to expose how many users have starred a given item (and show who those users are, to help folks find users they might be interested in following).I like this idea. I think it could also eventually grow into being a place to expose recommended users -- ie for now, we just show some little random sample of who starred it, but later that could be a more intelligent sample. If we allow paging through them all, replace sample with sort order :)It also reminds me that right now there are some interesting things you can do with starred items, but they require far too much creativity and too many workflow steps to accomplish. For a simple example, maybe we should have something like this be configured by default when you start:* always subscribed to the starred items of anyone you follow * always starts with a slider for "starred items of people I follow"* possibly always starts out following somebody (? like how tom is always your friend on myspace when you start)I'd also like to think about how starred items and following / followers fit together from a more idealized perspective that's divorced from how it works now. What would everyone's ideal way of working with these be?
I think the Delicious model of "popular bookmarks" hits this really well. I like how simple and potentially "academic" Delicious stays with their interface. Again - we can stick to a pure numbers game with the starring. I am attaching the visual of Hypemachine and Delicious for those in this list who are not on them.
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Here we know there are users behind this - but you are not distracted by them. You are still focused on the task of reading, bookmarking, searching or listening to music.
I also think that we ought to consider adding profile images to melkjug, to put a more engaging face on the other folks using this tool. Gravatars are pretty simple to implement, and key off of email address, which we already require for users.Yeah this could be an easy win. I'd also like to see a reworking of the follower / following presentation and workflow. My feeling on this is that twitter basically has it right. Present some sampling for other users to use for discovery, show the full list paged elsewhere with search.
I would be weary of this - remember Melkjug is yet not about the friend making and finding. Its about the reading - we should get that step right before making it a social portal. All the hooks might be in for that but people can get tired of seeing "yet another social network". We might want to bring out the power of the network in more subtle manners rather than pictures.
Its important for us to hone in on the sliders and that experience. No one is doing that too well right now. FB is but in terms of managing ones taste(its buried). We have a HUGE potential to get that nailed. Lets not make it a social network right from the start - if it calls for it we can slowly open that up (but we need critical mass for that to happen)
- sonali
- Luke -- Archive: http://www.openplans.org/projects/melkjug/lists/melkjug-development-list/archive/2009/03/1237563035438To unsubscribe send an email with subject "unsubscribe" to [email protected] . Please contact [email protected] for questions.
