The free traffic ranking tool Alexa has made some improvements to their system: Addition of geography of users. A site’s traffic rank in other countries. Modification to their ‘reach’ data.
Category: customer experience
Personalization: Now More Personal Than Before
BusinessWeek looks at some new personalization and recommendation tools that are on the horizon. “The goal of the new generation of recommendation tools is to encourage visitors to stay as long as possible on particular sites and, in the process, deliver as many ads as possible to users—without alienating them.”
A Focus on User Experience
David Pogue of the New York Times looks at the redesign effort behind the upcoming release of Microsoft Office. I thought it was interesting how Microsoft took the rare step (for any company) to truly rethink the purpose of the program suite, and look at its usage from a users perspective, instead of a features… Continue reading A Focus on User Experience
Books Go Online, Thanks to Google
Google is looking to reshape the book industry: “Google and some of the world’s top publishers are working on plans that they hope could do for books what Apple’s iPod has done for music.” The proposed system would “allow readers to download entire books to their computers in a format that they could read on… Continue reading Books Go Online, Thanks to Google
Communal, Specialized, and Personalized Experience in Media
Scott Karp askes, “Is News A Fundamentally Shared, Social Experience?” His theory: “Despite all the hype about the “user in control,” purely personalized news may be too much control, a slippery slope that leads to solipsism. The proverbial “water cooler” is symbolic of our fundamental need to share the news, to validate our experiences by… Continue reading Communal, Specialized, and Personalized Experience in Media
Measuring Engagement Online: A New Media Challenge
Robert Scoble looks at the need for better web metrics, focusing on a need to measure “engagement” on a website. He illustrates his point comparing two sites, and what would happen if they added a link to your website on their page. He posits that a site such as The Register would result in few… Continue reading Measuring Engagement Online: A New Media Challenge
Print is Dying
The future is now: “Europeans now spend more of their week online than they do reading newspapers or magazines, according to a report.” While many may scoff at reports like this, it is hard to ignore a trend that will dramatically shape the next generation of information products: “…15-24 year-olds spend most time online, with… Continue reading Print is Dying
Evolution of Trust in Media
A new survey looks at the evolution of trust in the media: “Consumers trust traditional media over blogs, podcasts and other Internet-only publications for information on major news events, like pandemics and natural disasters, according to the results of a recent survey.” This was not surprising to me, because it looks at a very particular… Continue reading Evolution of Trust in Media
Profit by Giving it Away for Free
Yahoo is opening itself up: “Officials of the world’s largest Internet media company said on Friday it planned to give away the underlying code to Yahoo Mail, one of the crown jewels of its business, in a bid to encourage software developers to build new applications based on e-mail.” Why would a non-programmer care about… Continue reading Profit by Giving it Away for Free
Cashing in on the Long Tail
David Berlind has a great post about a recent talk that AOL’s CEO John Miller recently gave about online growth and user generated media, among other topics. Excerpts from David’s summary of the talk: “…the bottom line is that if people are spending more of their time online, and the number of hours in the… Continue reading Cashing in on the Long Tail