BlogSat

A few months ago, Sheryl Sandberg (Facebook, COO) declared at a conference. "Email is probably going away." My immediate reaction was: "Umm...ok." I knew what she meant, but still disagreed with the phrasing. A lot of communication that would've been email for me in the past was now posts to my Facebook wall or messages in my FB Messages (which is really just a closed, ok-ish webmail client.) Some of this was for the better (e.g. Wall posts), some of it was definitely for the worse. Here's what happens when someone sends me a FB Message (!!rant warning!!) I end up opening a message in my gmail account. Read it; occasionally hit reply before remembering this won't work.... Grr Go to Facebook and complete the communication.... 3-4 completely unnecessary clicks And if someone forks a message thread, it results in a huge mess that generally makes me want to punch my computer screen.... . Whoomp! The need for a system that reliably delivers text and more t...

As friends know, I use the Facebook birthday reminder feature quite a bit to remind me to wish folks on their birthday. So it was annoying a couple of weeks ago, when I almost missed a really good friend's birthday (after wishing a few others :)) simply because the default setting on Facebook stops at showing just five friends' birthdays for the day. You need to click on " See more" to see the rest. I understand the logic and the UX choice: the little birthday widget just shows you the next five birthdays from your list of friends (Nicely-spaced; works for most users; makes sure the ad below stays above the fold ) But on days when you have more than 5 friends with a birthday, which happens more often than most people think , its pretty easy to miss a few friends, because as as user you get used to seeing five birthdays with only a few being today and most on the following days. So a couple of suggested tweaks to fix this for folks like me: By default, always show mo...

I was at the Facebook developer conference for part of the day yesterday. The vision outlined in the keynote was incredibly impressive and ambitious. There's plenty of analysis across the Web, but my raw notes just on the keynote below. I came away very impressed with their vision and their strategy, especially the open-graph and graph api, the limits they’re pushing on privacy and their attempt at building the semantic web; how they’ll use it to benefit the FB experience and other sites. I caught myself saying “Whoa” a couple of times during Bret Taylor’s preso Raw Notes: Ambience: I couldn’t help comparing since this venue plays host to a number of conference including Of all the conferences this year, the clear winner is Paypal X ; Violinists beat canned, loud rock hands down. Parking was more expensive than I remember it. Keynote was very packed. The person checking me in seemed to become less friendly the minute she saw Google on the badge (Reminder: next year go back to...

I ended up spending half a day at Facebook's f8 developer conference . First the completely unnecessary random, rambling thoughts as I walked in just in time to attended the keynote Huh, its got a cool feel to it; dark lighting; couches, bold (but not Googley) colors marking the different areas; might be fun mascot in a gorilla suit blocks my way (seriously!) I smile awkwardly till he moves out of the way; he's dancing now and does the same thing to someone who looks genuinely panic-stricken by the simian.....I wonder if anyone will punch him by the end of the day. looks like the entire Facebook staff turned out here; I'm wondering if the ratio of attendees:employees is in the 2:1 or 3:1 range. The keynote is about to start: its kinda hot and I'm feeling drowsy at 1:30 in the afternoon Zuckerberg is about to speak: he seems to be kinda nervous: he starts with a cheesy opening line...hmmmm; this could be bad. He seems a little over-coached and nervous: the writing is spo...