Posts Tagged ‘user experience’
PositionDial is anonymous
Posted on: July 9, 2014
PositionDial is anonymous – if you want it to be.
Last night I attended an excellent event hosted by Involve at the University of Westminster – entitled ‘Technology and Democratic Participation – friend or foe.’
A point well made by Catherine Howe was on paying attention to the architectural layer, not just the application layer. And the ‘why.’ Including the choices we make about identity as we build opportunities to participate online.
I have spoken and written on the importance of anonymity and flexible identities online many times, and this is very much built into PositionDial‘s architecture.
PositionDial helps you work out where you stand, see who matches you, and explore the issues you care about. We have several levels of identity on site (and are at this moment building an even more super-secure identity system for y’all):
- Anonymous – you can use PositionDial, and get your PositionDial, without registering with us or logging in. We use cookies to remember you and help you build your dial as you browse from page to page. But we don’t store your IP address. So there’s no way of us storing your activity or your PositionDial with your location or identity once you close your browser window.
- Pseudonymous – You can register with any username you like / or Twitter – we don’t force you to use your full, real name
- Full name – but if you don’t mind, we’d love you to know your real name. We’ll only use it for keeping in touch and making PositionDial better for you.
There’s a lot of valid, and invalid concern about data sharing and privacy on social media and discovery sites. Transparency is of course the best and the only way to handle this.
For our part, PositionDial offers agencies, charities, businesses and others analytics and insight into where their target customers, stakeholders and partners stand on important issues (we strongly believe this is win:win, if ‘they’ know better, they can do better for all of us). These analytics are based on aggregated, anonymised social PositionDials, and aggregated action PositionDials (from data about MP voting and companies etc. which is already public).
In other words, we would never, and have no reason to, share any personally identifiable data about you.
Furthermore, as stipulated in our privacy policy, we would, as Twitter and others have done before, closely interrogate and strenuously resist outside requests to access your data.
You also have the right to be forgotten (by us). That is, seriously, even if you’ve signed up and got your PositionDial and it’s all saved nice and neatly in our system. If you want out, we’ll delete you. Simples.
Image credit: Triple Pundit
Yieldbot boasts massive conversion improvements for intent-based targeting over paid search
Posted on: November 21, 2012
For website owners and advertisers, user intent matters. But those ever-desirable eyeballs may as well be attached to sticks for all we know about their owners much of the time. The feelings, the mood, the intent of site visitors is incredibly valuable to understand, because knowing this and serving up an appropriate user experience enables happier, more satisfied individuals.
Yieldbot is a publisher-side analytics and targeting platform which “captures and organizes the realtime intent existing in web publishers and makes it available to advertisers so they can match offers and ads at the exact moment consumers are most open to receiving relevant marketing.”
In the presentation below, Yieldbot boasts goal conversion of 26% higher than Google paid search and 326% higher than organic Google search traffic, on a ‘Leading deal site for Moms’ for ads placed according to its ‘intent-based targeting.’ (You may also be interested in this Business Insider post which refers to Yieldbot as a solution for Yahoo.)
Just noticed this new detail on a Linkedin profile I was checking out – it’s part of Linkedin’s new style layouts. I really like the way it visualises how you are connected to others: as you roll over the little circles (g+ inspired?) you can see all of the companies associated with a person, and those you share in common.
You can also select network types from the drop-down menu: industry, school and location, e.g.:
“Users say they’re frustrated by Facebook’s ‘incomprehensible’ personal privacy policies, frequent changes to the interface, and a lack of usability in general,” summarizes the [2012 Global Brand Simplicity] report authors (siegel+gale). “It’s just been one big ‘dislike’ for those seeking simplicity.”
Some of Darwin’s statements to others also cast doubt on his mental stability. For example, in 1875 he wrote the following words to fellow scientist Robert Hooker:
You ask about my book, & all that I can say is that I am ready to commit suicide: I thought it was decently written, but find so much wants rewriting. . . . I begin to think that every one who publishes a book is a fool (quoted in Colp, 1977, p. 228).
While Darwin may well have been mentally disturbed quite severely and frequently during his quite brilliant life… this particular quote I find hilarious.. and totally lucid. The capability to edit our work after publishing, especially for those of us that agonise over what they have written on looking back, is a tremendous gift from the web to us all.
In this vein perhaps Branch should reconsider its unfortunate design ‘feature’ … I’m sure it will do the service, and its users, no favours..
There’s no edit button and no delete button. If you make a mistake, just keep going. It’s a little unsettling, but Miller wants to force a little more thoughtfulness in online dialog.
Mariamz 
Design detail: Dezeen highlights user comments
Posted by: Mariam on: November 7, 2012
This web design detail on Dezeen encourages and champions online engagement neatly – highlighting ‘reader* comments’ prominently alongside editor picks.
*I wonder how long publishers will keep calling active online participants ‘readers’ for.. always seems too passive