MediaBistro. It's a Circus out there

On Wednesday I spoke at Mediabistro Circus on User Experience & Social Media. It was a fun experience and I met some interesting people. I discussed five reasons why its a circus out there in the world (yes, that pun was intended!). 

Probably one of my most provocative points was that globalization has resulted in a weird kind of standardization. For all the talk about cultural nuances needing to be accounted for when designing for specific regions, countries and cultures, increasingly we are borrowing ideas from each other around the world. As a result, sites are starting to look more and more similar. 

In highlighting the Facebook newsfeed design feature, I also explained that sometimes its the relatively small design features that can make all the difference. Newsfeed launched in September 2006 and the eight million Facebook users at the time were extremely upset about it. They saw it as an invasion of their privacy and threatened to boycott the social network. In retrospect, that one feature has arguably contributed more to Facebook's success (and the adoption of some of the applications) than anything else that they have done. Today, Facebook has 70 million users and is fast catching up to MySpace.

You'll find coverage of my session with some kind works from the MediaBistro folks at UnBeige which is where I picked up the photograph above.