Jaanix Revisited
- 1. Olga Smyslova olga@smyslova.com Social Search and Discovery:
- 2. The evolution of recommendation engine
- 3. YouTube videos aggregator: • View the videos and vote ↑ Jaa or ↓ Nix • Get videos to view based on your interests, likes, and dislikes
- 4. Usability Methods: • Discount Usability studies (live and remote, via Skype) • Questionnaires (mostly on usage of social services and new Jaanix features) • Getting as much feedback as possible through forums and discussion groups • Conceptual studies and exploration: what users like to use and why
- 5. Target audience (same as Digg, Del.icio.us, Reddit) • Internet-savvy (spending 3-4 hours per day online) • Relatively young (up to their 40-ies) • Highly connected • Strong desire to be up to date • Mostly male
- 6. Users feedback: it looks nice, but… • I have no idea what to do with it, other than watching videos • Why some of the videos move to another place, while others don’t? • What is it all about?
- 7. Further approximations • A separate page for registration: 5 topics/tags for users to choose to find relevant content • Tabs (pictures, videos, links) • Tag cloud • Search on site
- 10. Users needs: • To find new, interesting stories on the web • To be able to reach their favorite content • To share content with friends and discuss it • To feel social, engaged, in the flow
- 11. Social networking experience feedback • I start my day with my friend feed… After reading a funny story I feel like I met with my friends – now I am up and running • It is like a cup of tea or going to a great party • I feel very social and ready for adventures… worse than that – I am ready for my daily boring routines
- 12. Interviews showed: Highly connected study participants use social networking sites as their creative labs or gatherings around water cooler. They get inspiration, ideas, support, peer recognition online and share their findings there.
- 13. Jaanix: users’ feedback • No need to click and choose topics I want to see something interesting right now • Ownership Where my favorite videos will go? Can I keep my own links there? • Easy posting process I want to grab the good stuff I see and post it right away, no hassle with links, copy-and-paste…
- 14. Posting process: one click
- 15. Compare with LiveJournal: posting a picture
- 16. Compare with Blogger: posting a video
- 17. Compare with Reddit: link submission
- 18. Next Jaanix incarnation: • Tag cloud transformed into categories (still tags) with sliders: • All types of content together – links, video, and pictures • Name of a person submitting a link • Jaanix magic numbers: ratings
- 19. Series of A/B testing: Rating tools
- 21. Picture size
- 22. Analysis of comments: • Whenever possible • Not taken as granted, but a stimulus for more research
- 23. Log analysis • February – a great month for Jaanix • Each wide discussion on any service or forum sends crowds to check on Jaanix • Some of them stay with us…
- 24. Registered users statistics: sliders vs. votes usage Three equally divided groups: • Some visitors use sliders to play with Jaanix content • Some like to vote on submissions and see what Jaanix can suggest them • Some like both tools
- 25. Communication needs: users’ metaphors on using Jaanix • Watching a movie alone • Spending time in an aquarium. There are beautiful fish and interesting people around, but you cannot reach them • “Cold” service, not sure that there are real people behind the scenes
- 26. The social network was born • Most users appealed to a social network or forum while discussing Jaanix (RSS feed, Livejournal, Reddit) • Users wanted to see _who_ submitted a link or a video • Communication needs: the ability to discuss the link posted by others.
- 27. Visitor numbers: • Return visitors (no accounts) – 7% • Convertion rate (percent of users creating accounts after visiting Jaanix) - 1% • Number of active users (posting at least once a week) – about 200 • Number of Jaanix users – about 2000 (visiting Jaanix at least once a week)
- 29. Heat maps usage: Link “People” was on site before the functionality itself Users showed interest, clicking on the link The functionality was added as users “requested”
- 30. The final version of Jaanix: • Social bookmarking • Personalized recommendations • Micro-blogging • Comments • The ability to find like-minded people • Export to Deli.cio.us and Twitter • Keeping spammers out: the accounts were not suspended, but nobody could see their posts
- 32. Some more feedback • The combination of Jaanix and illumio – a hosted service that found relevant material in RSS feeds – would be brilliant. For now, I'll use both; illumio to sort feeds, and Jaanix to repost and comment on interesting articles. • It hadn't reached critical mass for a while, but recently I've found a lot of absolutely fascinating articles on things relative to my interests. Reading the internet is fun again! • I have now played with this site for about the past hour and I’m sorry, I still don’t get it.
- 33. And more… • I like how, after several hours, there is no mention under "politics" of Bhutto's assassination and one of the top three articles is a week old DailyKos humor piece • I kept scrolling down casually, thinking: "wow, there are a lot of links on the main page because I keep scrolling and I have yet to hit the bottom.“ • Reddit by people who can write software. • Chasing the footer links down the page right now trying to read the faq and about sections... :)
- 34. Lessons learned: • Jaanix remained a black box users could not understand. • RSS import: let users bring their luggage with them • Keeping the existent networks is vital for the users along with the ability to comment others’ posts.
- 35. Jaanix Creators: • Joseph Petviashvili • Jonathan Christensen • Koen Vos