Last night, I attended the Lean UX Meetup at Meetup HQ.

The event started with a tech pizza party, followed by a panel with the user experience (UX) team of AppNexus, concluding with a Q&A with Jeff Gothelf of The Ladders.

For me, Jeff Gothelf was the draw. This past March, I attended Jeff’s talk on Lean UX at SXSW and it was incredibly insightful.

The panel from AppNexus told a pretty interesting story. They spoke about their experiences at the Lean User eXperience residency (LUXr).

LUXr is a 10 week program for early stage companies that teaches agile development best practices.

Key takeaways from the panel:

• When conducting research, two-on-one interviewing works best. One person should lead the meeting and the other should take notes. (My mind started to wander after this as I began thinking about the Bobs from Office Space)
• They recommend Silverback (Mac Only) for usability testing
• Their UI design process involves creating lightweight HTML right from sketches.

Last night, I got the chance to pitch my startup, Clubster, to the Ultralight Startups group at Microsoft.

Citymaps won the pitch contest.  Their web app aggregates tweets from local businesses and mashes the tweets up with an interface similar to Google Maps.  I really like what their app does and I anticipate this will be a great way for businesses to get found in local search.

The citymaps web app

After the pitches, there was the obligatory techie pizza party and then a great panel on community management with Kyle Bragger (Forrst), Chris Maguire ( Etsy, Postling, and Waffl), Brett Petersel (Mashable, The Community Manger), and Laurel Touby (Mediabistro.com).

looking forward to my panel (building a valuable online community) tonight w/ @revolvingdork @laureltouby @kylebragger at @ulsnet! #woot

July 14, 2011 7:36 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@Brett

Brett Petersel

Here are my key takeaways from the panel:

• $49 per year or $5 per month for freemium (pro) memberships seems to be a magic number
• “Badges” work for Foursquare. But, the widespread adoption of “badges” is similar to Cargo Cults.
• “Niche communities are very popular, that’s why we now have Clubster” (Thanks Laurel for bringing up Clubster in the panel!)

Cruchbase links to the companies mentioned are below:

Here are some photos from last night’s event

HOW TO: Optimize Text Ads for Search http://on.mash.to/lmyUiX My latest on @mashable, featuring SEO expert @michaelgold. RT @mashable

June 6, 2011 7:20 pm via Mashable FollowReplyRetweetFavorite

@ericaswallow

Erica Swallow

Check out my top tips for optimizing text ads for search featured on Mashable.com.  This article was written by Mashable editor Erica Swallow.

Please comment on the article and share with friends if you find it useful.

Greg Meyer at Gist has written an article on how to view gist social info inside of Salesforce.com contacts.

I noticed that Greg’s code mentioned Salesforce contacts only.  So, I modified his code so that I could view Gist data inside of Salesfoce.com leads as well.  Following the directions in Greg’s article took me around 10 minutes to add Gist to my Salesforce.com account.

After following Greg’s instructions, I repeated the process using the code below.

I also made some other changes to Greg’s code so that the Iframe margins hide the Gist logo, top header and some of the page borders.  The image attached to this post is a sample lead, with my brother-in-law’s contact details from Gist.  I think it looks pretty nice, almost native to Salesforce.

Here is my Apex code for the GistLeads Visualforce page:

<apex:page standardController="Lead">
<iframe style="margin:-60px 0 0 -50px;" width="1080" height="760" src="https://gist.com/entities/find?source=salesforce&Name={!Lead.Name}&Email={!Lead.Email}&Phone={!Lead.Phone}&Website={!Lead.Website}&Company={!Lead.Company}&Lead%20ID={!Lead.Id}&%20Address%20Line%201={!Lead.Street}&%20Postal%20Code={!Lead.PostalCode}&%20Sate={!Lead.State}&%20Country={!Lead.Country}&%20City={!Lead.City} " name="gist" scrolling="auto" frameborder="no">
</iframe>
</apex:page>

and here is my Apex code for the GistContacs Visualforce page:

<apex:page standardController="Contact">
<iframe style="margin:-60px 0 0 -50px;" width="1080" height="760" src="https://gist.com/entities/find?source=salesforce&Name={!Contact.Name}&Email={!Contact.Email}&Phone={!Contact.Phone}&Website={!Contact.Account.Website}&Company={!Contact.Account.Name}&Contact%20ID={!Contact.Id}&Account:%20Phone={!Contact.Account.Phone}&Account:%20Fax={!Contact.Account.Fax}&Mailing%20Address%20Line%201={!Contact.MailingStreet}&Mailing%20Postal%20Code={!Contact.MailingPostalCode}&Mailing%20Sate={!Contact.MailingState}&Mailing%20Country={!Contact.MailingCountry}&Mailing%20City={!Contact.MailingCity}&Home%20Phone={!Contact.HomePhone} " name="gist" scrolling="auto" frameborder="no">
</iframe>
</apex:page>

If you have any questions, please ask in the comments below.

Phone and email communications were once as issue-laden for businesses as search engines are today.  But it’s now rare to get a busy signal or bounced-back email when contacting a business.

So why are businesses today struggling with leveraging the search engines as a form of inbound communication, when the search engines clearly have the potential to deliver so many customers?

The short answer is that most of what has been written about search engine optimization (SEO) is wrong and many of the so-called experts are incorrect.

SEO has changed drastically since I first got involved in Internet Marketing in 1996 – so much so that very little of what influenced search engine ranking back in the 90’s still holds true today.  Nonetheless, many SEO “experts” still preach and practice the old SEO tactics, which can be, at best, ineffective.  At worst, these tactics can result in a permanent ban from the search engine results and can lead to lost business.

It’s no surprise that business people are confused about SEO.  This begs a very difficult question: What should a small business be focusing on when thinking about SEO?

Effective SEO for today’s search engines can be broken down into three parts:

1. Merchandising
2. Publicity
3. Marketing

Without using any industry jargon or web lingo, I will summarize why the search engines view these as important criteria.

Merchandising
Merchandising makes me think about walking into a department store.  Department store employees spend time selecting and neatly organizing the racks of clothes and accessories, so that I, as an expeditious shopper, can quickly make a purchase and leave the store with what I was looking for.

Imagine, on the other hand, that I walked into the store and clothes were strewn everywhere and a mob of customers was fighting over the last sweater on clearance.  I would probably exit the store immediately.

Search engines view websites in much the same way.  If the content is disorganized, weak or not relevant to what you are selling, then it will be difficult to properly classify and rank your site.  A well-organized, highly relevant website will form a foundation for your website to be classified properly and ranked highly for the search terms that are important to your business.

Publicity
If merchandising were the only factor that influenced search engine rank, then arguably the websites with the most content would be ranked the highest. In the 90’s this was mostly true. However, it was relatively simple to game this system of ranking websites, which made the older search engines very susceptible to “spammy” web pages.

When Google launched in the early 2000’s, its founders added additional ranking criteria.  Google added ranking points for trustworthy websites that receive a lot of publicity from other trustworthy websites.  Basically, Google measures the consistency of the message about your website by how other websites view your site.

Why is this important? Let’s compare this to a social situation: I have just met someone for the first time at a party.  My new acquaintance says that he has a great business opportunity for me.  If, later at the party, I run into a few people whom I already know and trust, and these individuals confirm important characteristics about my new acquaintance, I might be likely to believe what this guy told me.  If however, no one at the party knows him or if there is a conflicting message, I might not trust anything that my new acquaintance told me.

The search engines today put a similar emphasis on trust and publicity when ranking websites, and positive publicity with a consistent message from trustworthy websites will boost rankings.

Marketing
The earliest business websites were online corporate brochures.  The next wave of websites were online multimedia presentations. The newest wave of websites work to build relationships with visitors by utilizing social media such as blogs, forums, surveys and online chat.

On-site social media and user generated content now has a big impact on SEO.

I’ll compare this to another real-life social situation.  If I walked into a room at a party and noticed that on one side of the room a few people were sitting and conversing quietly, while on the other side of the room people were standing in a circle and chatting raucously, I would think the people standing in the circle were having a more interesting and engaging conversation.

In May 2010, Google updated its ranking criteria to include observations like these from social media and placed an even greater emphasis on awarding high ranks to websites with engaging user generated content.  Now, blog posts with many comments and forum threads with a lot of replies usually rank very well in Google’s search results.

So, here are a few key points to take back to your company’s board room:

• Your website needs a merchandising strategy – Make sure the content on your website is relevant to what your business is selling and neatly organized.
• Your website needs a publicity strategy – Make sure our website is getting the publicity it needs.
• Your website needs a marketing strategy – Make sure your website builds relationships with your visitors.

Wave features heralded by Google include character-by-character live typing within the web browser and the ability to share images and other media in real time.

Despite the initial excitement surrounding the product when it launched last year, Wave was slow to catch on, probably due to its complexity.

“Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked. We don’t plan to continue developing Wave as a standalone product,” Google Senior Vice President of Operations Urs Hölzle said in the post.

Even Wave development team leader Lars Rasmussen admitted in May that the product was “a little daunting” for new users, and that Google had “failed to answer the question of what can I actually use Wave for, right now, right here.”

Mr. Hölzle said Google will extend Wave’s technology for use in other projects and that the company will work on creating tools to allow users to easily “liberate” their content from Wave.

Wave joins the long list of Google’s failed social media attempts, including Orkut and Google Lively. 

Maybe the company will have more luck with its rumored new social network, Google Me.

The social media site has posted the following statement on its blog:

Rumors claiming that Facebook’s Phonebook feature exposes phone numbers are false. The Phonebook allows you to find your friends’ phone numbers if they’ve posted them to Facebook and made them available for their friends. Learn and share the facts in this blog post.

The Phonebook allows Facebook users to see their friends’ phone numbers in one simple list. It also displays contacts imported from a user’s phone.

A report on All Facebook debunks the rumor, explaining that the feature is meant to give users an easy way to locate their friends’ contact info. The post gives step-by-step graphic instructions on how you can your hide phone number from your friends, if you choose to keep that information private.

Essentially, there are two ways to remove your phone number from appearing on other peoples’ Phonebooks: (1) adjust your privacy settings or (2) remove your phone number from your Facebook profile. The better bet seems to be modifying your privacy settings, since Facebook uses your phone number to verify your account even if you didn’t add it to your profile. The mobile Phonebook feature can be disabled with one click.

While it appears that the Phonebook does not permit the sharing of phone numbers with third party non-users and with friends of users who have hidden their numbers, the security glitch rumor is just another headache for the social media site in its neverending battle over privacy concerns.

Facebook will roll out changes today that will make it easier for our users to understand and control their privacy settings. As this change will have an impact on our users, we wanted to let you, a valued advertising partner, know about it. Please note that this change will not affect your advertising campaigns and there is no action required on your part.



Facebook is a company that moves quickly, constantly innovating and launching new products to improve the user experience. The feedback we heard from users was that in our efforts to innovate, some of our privacy settings h ad become confusing.
 


We believe in listening to our users and taking their feedback into account whenever possible. We think the following changes address these concerns by providing users with more control over their privacy settings and making them more simple to use.



Starting today, Facebook will: 

* Provide an easy-to-use “master” control that enables users to set who can see the content they share through Facebook.  This enables users to choose, with just one click, the overall privacy level they’re comfortable with for the content they share on Facebook. Of course, users can still use all of the granular controls we’ve always offered, if they wish.

* Significantly reduce the amount of information that must be visible to everyone on Facebook. Facebook will no longer require that users’ friends and connections are visible to everyone. Only Name, Profile Picture, Networks and Gender must be publicly available. Users can opt to make all other connections private.


* Make it simple to control whether other applications and websites access any user information. While a majority of our users love Facebook apps and Facebook-enhanced websites, some may prefer not to share their information outside of Facebook. Users can now opt out with just one click.


I encourage you to take a moment to read our CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s blog post and check out the new Facebook Privacy Page.

Thanks,
The Facebook Ads Team

In his blog post, Zuckerberg claimed that the changes would make the site’s information controls much simpler.  Zuckerberg said “[w]e’ve focused on three things: a single control for your content, more powerful controls for your basic information and an easy control to turn off all applications.”

The new changes are to be rolled out over the next few weeks and can be reviewed on Facebook’s new privacy page.

In a Washington Post op-ed piece published today, Zuckerberg attempted an apology to its more than 400 million users in response to mounting criticism over issues with Facebook’s privacy settings. 

Facebook has come under fire recently for privacy settings that exposed personal user data, including users’ private chats, to the public due to confusing settings and technical glitches.  Zuckerberg’s statement attributed the errors to a quickly-growing community, but admitted that the privacy controls were too complex.

“We have heard the feedback,” said Zuckerberg. “There needs to be a simpler way to control your information. In the coming weeks, we will add privacy controls that are much simpler to use. We will also give you an easy way to turn off all third-party services. We are working hard to make these changes available as soon as possible.”