Comments on: Review: Spokeo, a social network aggregator http://comments.deasil.com/2007/09/07/review-spokeo-a-social-network-aggregator/ escape colon w q Mon, 01 Dec 2008 19:17:35 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5.1 By: felix http://comments.deasil.com/2007/09/07/review-spokeo-a-social-network-aggregator/#comment-4485 felix Fri, 07 Sep 2007 20:33:59 +0000 http://comments.deasil.com/2007/09/07/review-spokeo-a-social-network-aggregator/#comment-4485 Harrison, yeah, that's exactly the sort of audience I thought this product would be good for! But, beyond that I think your interface wouldn't need much to start serving a more heavy usage audience (i.e. me :). Very broadly just two things, if you tweaked the "overview" screen so that it behaved a little more like google reader where it's quick hits that you can expand down. And giving a means to view all the unread stuff across feeds. From a UI perspective I think that would not be too big a departure - since all the components are pretty much already there. Other stuff like more group functionality would be icing on the cake. :) Please don't think I'm suggesting you should throw away your current design! Harrison, yeah, that’s exactly the sort of audience I thought this product would be good for! But, beyond that I think your interface wouldn’t need much to start serving a more heavy usage audience (i.e. me :). Very broadly just two things, if you tweaked the “overview” screen so that it behaved a little more like google reader where it’s quick hits that you can expand down. And giving a means to view all the unread stuff across feeds. From a UI perspective I think that would not be too big a departure - since all the components are pretty much already there. Other stuff like more group functionality would be icing on the cake. :) Please don’t think I’m suggesting you should throw away your current design!

]]> By: Harrison http://comments.deasil.com/2007/09/07/review-spokeo-a-social-network-aggregator/#comment-4483 Harrison Fri, 07 Sep 2007 20:13:24 +0000 http://comments.deasil.com/2007/09/07/review-spokeo-a-social-network-aggregator/#comment-4483 Thank you for writing this extensive review on Spokeo. Your feedback gives us a lot of insights, and we are going to evaluate each one of them in our next design meeting. Our design goal is different from any other RSS reader, since we can syndicate non-RSS multimedia. We are built for casual reading, so we try very hard to stay away from complicated feed management. We want our users to come and get a glimpse of their networks' updates, then they can just move on. This is why we don't give our users too many options. Our users don't need to care about advanced functionalities, and they probably don't. We decide and stick with the default, and this is why our UI is so much cleaner than any other reader out there. It's like IPod vs. other MP3 players. IPod does not have FM/AM support, or recording sounds, or any of other jazz. However, because they don't have to integrate these peripheral features, IPod is the easiest to use. Spokeo is the same. We are here to aggregate and syndicate information, so our focus lies in syndicate broader content, and do it faster. We are not here to enable people to share or comment. Of course, our decisions on the default design can be wrong. This is where our user feedbacks come in, and this is why we thank you for writing this extensive review. We will seriously think about your suggestions, and if they make sense, we will throw away our current design and make yours our current default :) Thank you for writing this extensive review on Spokeo. Your feedback gives us a lot of insights, and we are going to evaluate each one of them in our next design meeting.

Our design goal is different from any other RSS reader, since we can syndicate non-RSS multimedia. We are built for casual reading, so we try very hard to stay away from complicated feed management. We want our users to come and get a glimpse of their networks’ updates, then they can just move on.

This is why we don’t give our users too many options. Our users don’t need to care about advanced functionalities, and they probably don’t. We decide and stick with the default, and this is why our UI is so much cleaner than any other reader out there.

It’s like IPod vs. other MP3 players. IPod does not have FM/AM support, or recording sounds, or any of other jazz. However, because they don’t have to integrate these peripheral features, IPod is the easiest to use. Spokeo is the same. We are here to aggregate and syndicate information, so our focus lies in syndicate broader content, and do it faster. We are not here to enable people to share or comment.

Of course, our decisions on the default design can be wrong. This is where our user feedbacks come in, and this is why we thank you for writing this extensive review. We will seriously think about your suggestions, and if they make sense, we will throw away our current design and make yours our current default :)

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