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Business Logs

Helping companies communicate better

Spivot Hijacking Your Content?

Spivot is yet another content aggregation site in a long line of content aggregation sites like 9rules, Newsvine, Topix, Daylife, etc., only Spivot might be a few months late to the party.

From the email I received, Spivot is an “all-purpose media reader… [that] brings together the functionality of news aggregation (Google News), with social news (Digg), with the capabilities of a feed aggregation tool (Bloglines).” A better description would be, “combines feed aggregation (like Bloglines, but less intuitive) with social news features (that Newsvine and a million other sites already have) with blog suggestion/aggregation (like 9rules, but Spivot doesn’t ask before they take your content) and mashes it together.

The Lock-In

When you bring in content from independent, outside sources (like bloggers) then you better be giving them something in return. After all, they’re doing the hard work of researching and writing articles on interesting topics, so if you have their content syndicated on your site, there has to be some benefit to the blogger or else you’re in the same bucket as those damn splogs we all hate so much.

If you visit the Art & Design blog section on Spivot, here’s what you’ll see:

  • A list of blogs in the sidebar that produce the content that section is displaying. Click on one of those links on the left and guess what? It doesn’t go to the actual site.
  • A list of articles in the center column from their sources in this category. Click on one of the article titles and you head to a page straight out of 1998 with a frameset and a “spivot toolbar” on the bottom so the actual article URL is hijacked. Most blogs have a “email this article” feature built into the site, but just in case that was too complicated, Spivot provides an email service, except the emails it sends out do not include 1) the author’s name or 2) the actual story URL. In fact, no links in the email land you at the real article at all, they all stick you back at the Spivot site. Oh, and if you don’t have JavaScript turned on, there’s no way to kill the annoying bottom frame nor use 90% of the website.
  • The only direct link to a source blog on the entire Spivot.com website can be found by clicking on the favicon next to a story. Think it’s going to take you to the blog? Think again, the link takes you to the RSS feed of the blog so you’re staring at code.

It seems like Spivot takes your content without asking, republishes it on their site, and then doesn’t mention your name as the author, doesn’t link to your site, and doesn’t link to your article anywhere. The only thing that could make this worse is if they shoved AdSense blocks next to blog author’s content.

They Could Definitely Have Done Better

Spivot is brought to you by the folks at Involution Studios, a digital product firm founded by two guys (Dirk Knemeyer & Andrei Herasimchuk) for whom I have great respect. Andrei was the first user interface designer hired by Adobe and designed most of the Photoshop interface we’re all used to today, and Dirk is an internationally-known champion of usability and product design with presentations all around the world. Too bad they took all that experience and knowledge and left it behind while they developed Spivot or else maybe it could have done well.

Oh, and before I forget. This whole concept was cooler when it was called Kinja, that site from another era that Gawker let slip into oblivion. Some of the design reminds me of Kinja too, weird.

Earth To USAToday: Adding Social Features Does Not Fix The Ugly

It seems to me that in a meeting at USAToday‘s offices, someone told them that making the site look and feel better was somewhat mutually exclusive from offering social features, so they chose “social and really ugly” over “not social but more visually appealing”.

As a designer and someone who visits many news sites each day (New York Magazine, NY Times, Newsvine, Daylife, etc.) I can honestly say this is the most appalling visual redesign I’ve seen in awhile. There are huge gaps of whitespace randomly strewn through the interface, major news article headlines are in the smallest font possible, images are not integrated thoughtfully within each article’s masthead box, they do not explain what the random small colored blocks mean throughout the interface, the bottom half of each page looks like someone just gave up and never designed it, etc., etc.

Scott Karp had this to say about the redesign:

“What are we to conclude from stark contrast between the (sometimes breathless) praise of USA Today’s “social media” redesign among tech/media bloggers and commentators, and the near universal rejection of the redesign among USA Today readers who commented on it? Could it be that it’s really the social media revolutionaries who “don’t get it” when they assume that what the people want is to rise up against the media autocracy and take control, when in fact what most people want is to get high quality information from a reliable source?”

So are “the people” right or the bloggers on TechMeme? Notice that everyone who is praising the social features on this site is praising *the technology* first and not even mentioning the shotty, haphazard user experience, but isn’t that what Web 2.0 is all about? Fawning over Ajax technical implementations and programming libraries before noting that nothing is actually *designed*? Seems like all the technical or social media prowess on the planet can’t buy you happy users, and USAToday is learning that firsthand.

[Read more…] about Earth To USAToday: Adding Social Features Does Not Fix The Ugly

Selling Business Logs

Update 3/16: Hey everybody, the site has been purchased for an agreed upon amount (higher than the initial bid, closer to the BIN) so the auction is officially closed. Thank you for all the interest and support! I’m staying on to write a bit for the next 3 months plus the redesign is coming soon. Stay tuned 🙂

Since the inception of 9rules back a few SXSW festivals ago, my goal was to work on it full-time or nearly full-time as soon as it was possible. Over the past several months I’ve been slowly transitioning out of client work and doing more 9rules-related activities, and now I feel that selling Business Logs is the last piece of the puzzle that will allow me to do what I’ve always wanted.

To be honest, there’s another reason I’m selling the site and it’s that I’m burnt out with the Web 2.0 industry, or more specifically, writing about the Web 2.0 industry. For awhile I’ve felt that a lot of companies lack that “oomph” that will push them over the top, and instead of constantly being the devil’s advocate and harping on them, I want to spend more time putting my money where my mouth is and making sure that 9rules is a success. Talking through a new section of 9rules with Paul and Tyme is 100x more rewarding than writing a blog entry on venture capital, so that’s where my focus is going to go.

Traffic

As mentioned in the Sitepoint auction, this site gets more traffic when I write vs. when I don’t write (just like most blogs) and based on the last 12 months of pageview statistics, the average per month is 50k pageviews but will surpass 100k for this month easily. I’ve never been obsessed with traffic coming to this site, but considering I’ve only been writing a few times each month recently, I don’t think it’s too bad and could get a lot higher with some additional articles.

Free Redesign

Upon completion of the sale, I will be working with the new owner on a redesign that will most likely be more content-centric and less one-author-personal-portfolio style. I think it’ll be surreal to be redesigning this site for someone else, but I’m sure it’ll be fun 🙂

Most Popular Articles

  • Mark Cuban Fined for Weblog Entry – One of my first tastes of viral linkage, this entry was written almost three years ago but continues to pull nice Google traffic (#3 for mark cuban weblog) and was linked from dozens of places including an ESPN.com article.
  • Lean XHTML and Precise CSS – One of many CSS-related articles I’ve written over the years, this one happened to be the most popular. (Related: My 5 CSS Tips, another very popular entry.)
  • iWeb-Generated Source Code is Awful – After iWeb was released by Apple, I stumbled upon the HTML it outputted and thought they could do a lot better. This entry was linked from a variety of Mac sites because I believe I was the first person to check out the source behind iWeb’s web wizardry and blog about it.
  • Digg and YouTube Powering Atheism 2.0 – I had the idea for this entry kicking around for awhile, and once I wrote it, it was nice to see it got so much attention.
  • Returning The Favor: The Toyota Mashup Challenge! – After learning that an ad agency that works for Toyota stole the 9rules logo I had some fun with their logo in return.
  • Movable Type vs. WordPress, My Opinion – I’ve been an MT user for awhile, but because 9rules uses WP for parts of the backend I’ve recently had a nice mixture of both so I thought a comparison review would be helpful.

What’s Next

Lots of fun 9rules stuff. Oh yeah, and a wedding to pay for. Did I not mention that at the beginning? 🙂

The Web’s Best Interface Design

The amount of new web applications, features, and companies sprouting up is just astounding, and while some like to characterize “Web 2.0” design as involving lots of cliché diagonal lines and shadows it still takes a lot of skill to execute an attractive user interface. I’ve been checking out new sites and web applications for many months now and I’ve put together my list of the best interface design examples I’ve found. Some companies/sites on this list may not be as “Web 2.0” as others (and I purposely chose not to includes sites based on design or design firms) but they still deserve the same recognition.

10. Wayfaring
Out of all the sites that use Google Maps, Wayfaring is by far my favorite. They’ve integrated Maps into the user interface very well, and the simple but usable layout is what many other startups should try to emulate. Very nice monochromatic color scheme as well, working with various hues of green to effectively block out sections of content — it also neatly keeps HTML/CSS weight down.

Wayfaring

9. Sharpcast
Synchronization startup Sharpcast has a simple website with expertly-crafted illustrations every place you turn, similar to a company further down on our list. Screenshots of their software are always nice to see, especially when (from what I can tell) the interface looks just as clean and elegant as their website. (Note: their site is currently switching from beta to public, so it’s not the same as it was when I originally made the list.)

8. Current TV
Current TV is a brand new concept where they combine user-generated content with actual TV airing to produce a type of on-demand network of great content. Visit their On-Air Preview page to get a taste of what is currently live on their TV channel. The site is dark but has some great coloring for each section to keep the visual interest alive, and their community area has a really creative way of showing the size and scope of their readers.

7. Plaxo
Regardless of what you think of Plaxo, it’s still one of the most beautifully designed corporate-type sites you’ll ever find. An extraordinary amount of time and effort was spent crafting every aspect of their site, from the glossy icons and glowing buttons, to the ever-present rounded corners and shadows everywhere. A lot of the site is done with ugly table code however, so that knocks the score down a bit.

Plaxo

6. Netvibes
Netvibes and Pageflakes are locked in the death throes of a one-upsmanship battle, which unfortunately for both companies is not the place to be in. Fortunately for Netvibes, I think their user interface trumps Pageflakes which adds at least one more feather to their cap. In case you are not familiar with Ajax portal homepages, they attempt to emulate the functionality that Lycos and Excite provided back in the late 90s, but without needing any page refreshes. And unlike Excite and Lycos, they’re nearly completely unprofitable because they allow so much user customization that no advertisements are shown at all. The subtle color themes are very well-executed, with beautifully rendered boxes that appear to have multiple layers of depth. Netvibes sets the Ajax portal standard, so if you ain’t putting it down better than Netvibes you better walk off the court right now.

Netvibes

5. LinkedIn
Similar to Plaxo’s look, LinkedIn also has a pleasing blue color scheme, but their layout is more reserved with their efforts spent more on the information architecture and layout rather than small graphical details like Plaxo. Most sections of the site have their own simple illustration nearby, which helps greatly in identifying the key information on the site. The Connections tab (need to be logged in) has great information graphics that immediately show how “connected” you are to any other person in your network. The small, information packed illustrations definitely go a long way into providing a better user experience.

4. ScienceBlogs
ScienceBlogs is a grouping of a few dozen great blogs on scientific topics like medicine, chemistry, psychology, and more. They are part of the larger whole of Seed Magazine, a fantastic new science magazine that has some of the best art direction of any printed periodical I’ve ever seen. Yet another great design from Mike Pick & Tim Murtaugh, 2 guys that need more exposure in the design community because they some incredible work.

3. Joyent
Joyent launched over a year ago (has it been that long!) and it’s still one of the best examples of design you can find gracing a startup’s site or application. Cameron Moll always produces astounding work, and this is no exception. Each section of the newly-redesigned site has its own illustration and color scheme.

Joyent

2. Threadless
What crazy t-shirt company has more fans than Threadless? The guys that run Threadless aren’t business or marketing geeks, they’re straight-up web designers and developers, so you can expect their company site’s user experience to be top notch. As with some of the other sites, they use Flash as a means of highlighting some sections of the site. Each page of Threadless.com is unique, just a great job all around.

1. Akamai
Akamai has been around longer than a lot of the companies on this list (put together!) and their new website is one of my favorite designs of all-time. Akamai provides many data-hosting services like streaming media and content delivery, and their website is as slick as their client list. They’ve effectively added interactive Flash animations to various parts of the site, and even their NOCC global control center is absolutely incredible.

Akamai

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