The Gong Show

Direct Giving

The drama over Kiva’s slightly misleading social stance has boiled over onto the NYTimes.  To summarize, Kiva has been marketing itself as a model to loan money directly to third world entrepreneurs.  But, the truth is that most entrepreneurs on the site already have an outstanding loan with a local micro-finance institution (MFI), and Kiva appearance of direct giving is really just a layer of marketing to enable people to give small loans to web-enabled MFIs around the world.

This layer of abstraction is fine by me… Kiva rocks. But for most of Kiva’s lenders, the idea that a lender’s choice of project is irrelevant on Kiva is surprising and disillusioning to most lenders.

The NYTimes piece gives the impression that the web is too nascent to enable direct Peer-to-Peer giving. That’s why I’m so impressed by DonorsChoose, who actually does enable direct giving to a specific classroom.  100% of the funds from a DonorsChoose donation goes to purchase the materials for the project you choose, and they implemented an e-procurement solution in order significantly reduce the opportunity for fraud.

Similarly, in the for-profit space, I’m excited by the prospects of Kickstarter, which is the new form of patronage online.  There’s no layer of abstraction in Kickstarter, the project you select to sponsor is the project that receives your funds, the giving is direct.

In areas where there is already an infrastructure in place and widespread internet connectivity penetration, direct giving online is possible and is already happening today.  It takes a ton of legwork to pull off and is not the easiest path to sponsorship.  But, it’s worth clearing the hurdles to enable direct giving because the resulting transparency and lender empowerment is worth the effort.

USV.com

We launched a new website at Union Square Ventures. It’s still a blog, just like it was 4 years ago, built on top of Movable Type.  But, now, we’ve got a whole bunch of other dynamic content widgets (powered by Magnify).  So, the latest blog posts, tweets, job postings and rich media from all our portfolio companies will be aggregated in one place.

@EricFriedman is the rockstar at USV that ran with this.  And, I’m incredibly impressed by the design talent of Phoebe Espiritu. Props to both.

Recession Statistics Sliced by Demographics

The New York Times consistently steps up the level of journalism in a digital age by publishing flash charts like this one.  It’s a fantastic, yet painfully transparent, visualization of how the recession affects varying demographics differently.

The unemployment rate for my demographic (white, male, college graduate, Age 25-44) is one of the lowest of all possible demographic combinations at 3.9%. What is particularly painful about this visual analysis is the effect race has on the statistics.  By contrast the unemployment rate for a black, male, college graduate, Age 25-44 is 8.3%, which is twice as high as its white equivalent.

Kudos to the NYTimes for a strikingly interesting and interactive piece of journalism.

(via HackerNews and great comment thread there)

Android's Affordances

I had an opportunity to play with the Droid yesterday (thanks to @ericfriedman). It was an overall positive experience. But, it felt like the user experience was missing a final coat of polish.  Here’s one small example that is very typical of the whole Android experience.

When using an iPhone, there is only 1 physical button on the face of the device, the home button.  This button always does what it says: takes you home.  Why does 1 dedicated button with consistent action matter?  Because it means all the available choices for interaction must be visible on the touchscreen.  In HCI terms, all interaction choices have a visible, explicit affordance.

By contrast, in Android there are 4 face buttons: back, options, home, and search.  Many interaction choices are hidden behind the options button.  So, I often found myself staring at the screen, asking myself where XYZ feature is, only to find it hidden behind an options button click.  But, that experience was not consistent it that the choices behind the options button changed based on the mode or app I was in.  By having an options button, many of the advanced functionality could be removed from the touchscreen, which simplified the interface, but it meant I was often guessing what feature were hidden behind options.  In HCI terms: there are no affordances for the choices behind the options button.

It’s not surprising that Apple decided to not to incorporate an options button like Android.  Apple’s operating systems have been optimized for a single-click mouse for years, based on the exact same arguement: don’t hide options behind a right click with no visible affordance.  They took this design paradigm and applied it to the iPhone.  It’s yet another way in which the following SAT-style analogy applies… iPhone:Android::Mac:PC

Verizon Droid Iconography

Does anyone else see the Droid eye as a cross between the Eye of Sauron and Hal 9000?  Why so evil, Verizon? I’m not saying I want my phone to look like a cute puppy, but the Droid Red Eye looks like the opposite of a simple, inviting experience.  It looks more like a device I will combat in an intense final battle, possibly to a John Williams score blasting in the background.

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Are We Friends?

“friends,” “followers,” “contacts” and other descriptors of the edges between nodes in a social graph are all poor choices of words. Being friends with someone on Facebook does not make us friends. Following you on Twitter does not make me your follower.

If I ran a social network I’d use a complete nonsense word to describe the edges on the social graph. Even “rebaflames” would be better than “friends.” Better for two reasons: 1) it wouldn’t be loaded with the social context of friendship and 2) it would allow you to define the lexicon in your space which leads to thought leadership. Like FeedBurner owning the term “burn” your feed.

Facebook Fan Pages

I don’t understand Facebook Fan Pages (and would love for that to change).  What’s the biggest thing that fan pages do for businesses?  Anyone have any examples of well-executed fan pages that a business would deem successful?