Iz haz feelingz! Now they hurted.

cheer up, emo kitteh.

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Google just effectively offed one of it's oldest, quirkiest features the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button.

The good news is that in the process, Google added at least another hundred million dollars in revenue.

It used to be that you could go to Google.com, type a search query into the search box and then, by clicking "I'm feeling lucky," go directly to the page that would have been listed as the top search result.

But then today happened, and Google announced "Google Instant." Now, when you go to Google.com and start typing a search into the search bar, Google instantly begins showing search results. Users no longer have a chance to click the "I'm Feeling Lucky Button" before they begin seeing search results. Essentially, the feature is dead.

So, how does killing the "I'm feeling lucky" button gain Google more than $100 million?

In 2007, Google search boss Marissa Mayer estimated that 1% of all Google searches go through the I'm Feeling Lucky button skipping Google's search results pages entirely.

That meant that Google showed ZERO ads (and therefore got ZERO ad clicks) on 1% of all Google search queries. Back in 2007, an analyst suggested the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button probably cost Google as much as $110 million per year.

At the time, Marissa Mayer said that Google hadn't ditched the button because "It's possible to become too dry, too corporate, too much about making money."

She said, "I think what's delightful about 'I'm Feeling Lucky' is that it reminds you there are real people here."

Today, Marissa gets to eat her (cup)cake and have it too. The "I'm Feeling Lucky" button is still there on Google.com perhaps reminding users there are real people at Google but it's been rendered entirely irrelevent.

Join the conversation about this story

See Also:

• Facebook Wins Patent For Social Search Results, Could Use It To Threaten Google
• Google Launches New Realtime Search Results Page
• SEC STALKER: AOL Is Hiding Information From You About Its Google Deal Until December 19

Google just offed one of it's oldest, quirkiest features the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button. The good news is that in the process, Google added about another hundred million dollars in revenue.

It used to be that you could go to Google.com, type a search query into the search box and then, by clicking "I'm feeling lucky," go directly to the page that would have been listed as the top search result.

But then today happened, and Google announced "Google Instant." Now, when you go to Google.com and start typing a search into the search bar, Google instantly begins showing search results. Users no longer have a chance to click the "I'm Feeling Lucky Button" before they begin seeing search results. Essentially, the feature is dead.

So, how does killing the "I'm feeling lucky" button gain Google more than $100 million?

In 2007, Google search boss Marissa Mayer estimated that 1% of all Google searches go through the I'm Feeling Lucky button skipping Google's search results pages entirely.

That meant that Google showed ZERO ads (and therefore got ZERO ad clicks) on 1% of all Google search queries. Back in 2007, an analyst suggested the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button probably cost Google as much as $110 million per year.

At the time, Marissa Mayer said that Google hadn't ditched the button because "It's possible to become too dry, too corporate, too much about making money."

She said, "I think what's delightful about 'I'm Feeling Lucky' is that it reminds you there are real people here,"

Today, Marissa gets to eat her (cup)cake and have it to. The "I'm Feeling Lucky" button is still there on Google.com perhaps reminding users there are real people at Google but it's been rendered entirely irrelent.

Join the conversation about this story

See Also:

• Facebook Wins Patent For Social Search Results, Could Use It To Threaten Google
• Google Launches New Realtime Search Results Page
• SEC STALKER: AOL Is Hiding Information From You About Its Google Deal Until December 19

Sadly, this is actually an advertisement for European billboard company EuroAWK, and not the work of some very enterprising (and very lucky) vandal, but it's still an excellent mashup.

(via Reddit)

There are well-known proverbs that imply (or state outright) that beauty is superficial and limited in what it can accomplish. It's what's inside that counts and Beauty is only skin deep are a few simple examples. Because the Web design industry is now flooded with a lot of raw talent, and because virtually anyone can create a beautiful website, recognizing a truly beautiful website experience is becoming increasingly difficult. What appears beautiful to the eye might in fact be more of a hindrance.

In this article, I hope to provide a clear demarcation between what is perceived by most to be beautiful in Web design and what is truly beautiful, along with some guiding principles to help designers today create websites whose beauty is not superficial, but rather improves and enhances the user experience.

[By the way, did you know we have a free Email Newsletter? Subscribe now and get fresh short tips and tricks in your inbox!]

Gradients, Drop-Shadows, Reflections, Oh My!

A lot of things could fall in the category of beautiful or attractive in the context of Web design. But a number of factors would make such beauty shallow. Is a website more attractive if it has tastefully placed drop-shadows, gradients or reflections? What if it has an eye-pleasing color scheme? What about big over-designed buttons? Could these be standards by which a design would be deemed beautiful?

If you've been keeping tabs on the Web design industry in the last five years, you've probably at some point visited one of the many CSS galleries. Visiting those inspirational showcases is great, and I'm sure we've all done it, but we need to be careful not to fall into the copycat syndrome, whereby we prettify our websites for no other reason than to make them CSS gallery-worthy.

Mint.com has everything a client could ask for in a Web 2.0 design. Does that mean it's beautiful?

The designers, developers and content strategists who planned and executed many of the websites in those galleries did what they did because they felt it would truly benefit the user experience and their clients' bottom line. The truly beautiful websites and apps in those showcases are not just visually beautiful; they're usable, accessible and optimized to benefit both the user and website owner.

The Dribbble Syndrome

With the recent popularity of Dribbble, the copycat syndrome might be gaining momentum. On Dribbble, a designer reveals a sample of something they're working on, and then the style of that small snippet starts spreading. The context and strategy underlying it are unknown, yet the style is still viewed as beautiful in and of itself. The designer may have taken hours, days or weeks to arrive at the decisions that informed the design, but now that it's out in the wild, the snippet becomes nothing more than eye candy.

Dribbble shows out-of-context design shots. Is this a bad thing?

Of course, the intent of this article is not to blame those who share their designs on Dribbble, nor to blame those who review these designs and offer feedback. But we mustn't lose sight of the fact that every design decision should have significant reasoning behind it.

The Style-Less Comparison

How do we measure beauty? If a website is difficult to use, then isn't its beauty without purpose? Look at the comparison in the image shown below.

The Nettuts+ logo and navigation bar.

I think Nettuts+ is a very nicely designed website. But is the fancy navigation and logo section shown on top more usable than the plain blue and white version below it? Taken at face value, some might argue that the plain version is more usable (if only slightly) than the beautiful one.

The Facebook home page.

While the Facebook home page shown on top might not appear the most beautiful design to many of us, it still contains attractive aesthetic elements (colors, gradient background, styled buttons, etc.). But when most of these minor elements are made plain, does it really affect the usability?

If prettiness is really as important as we think, then the current Facebook home page should perform much better than the plain alternative. How do we know, though, that the plain version wouldn't outperform the adorned version?

What Makes A Design Usable?

I'm not about to make a case for bringing back blue links on a white background on every website. In fact, as I'll explain, both Nettuts+ and Facebook may very well qualify as truly beautiful websites. The examples above were more illustrative, and not meant to criticize the designers who worked on them.

Rather, I'm encouraging designers to consider two things when adding beautiful enhancements to their designs.

• Responsive and intuitive page elements,
• Branding and consistency of theme.

Focusing on these two things will give every pixel in a design a purpose and will contribute to the website's overall usability. Let's consider both of these, with a few simple examples to illustrate their effectiveness.

Responsive and Intuitive Page Elements Make a Design Usable

If a design element makes a website feel more friendly or gives subtle hints as to what's happening, then this adds to its usability. Look at the simple example below from Design Informer:

On the Design Informer website, hover over the search box in the top right, and you'll notice it brightens up. This is not intrusive in any way, and it looks especially elegant in WebKit browsers, because the brightening animates with CSS3.

This very simple effect conveys to the user that this is a usable element, and it makes the search box more inviting. It's a ridiculously simple technique but has a very powerful effect.

But just because you can use an animated effect does not mean you should. If, as in the case of Design Informer, the effect makes the UI more intuitive and responsive, then it is justified. This statement by Stuart Thursby sums it up well:

If designers think that using HTML5 and CSS3 makes them a better designer just because they use them, then they're sorely misguided.

Include an element only if it accomplishes some usability-related purpose. If the design is not made more usable by a particular technique (whether via CSS3, JavaScript or something else), then the designer should reconsider whether the extra code is worth the effort. Decoration only goes so far and often has an effect opposite to the one intended, so consider yours carefully before including it in your design.

Another example of an animation that enhances usability is found on Soh Tanaka's new website. Look at the screenshot below from this post on his blog:

When you hover over any presentation of code on his website, you'll notice that the block expands to the right (probably via jQuery, so it would work in every browser).

Again, a simple effect, but not just eye candy; it has a purpose. In tutorials, HTML code is often too long to fit in the highlighter, so the code either wraps or creates ugly scroll bars. Tanaka's solution makes the code more inviting readable, and it decreases the likelihood of wrapping or scroll bars.

So whether we're talking about text links that change color on hover, buttons that move when clicked, AJAX that creates subtle yet intuitive effects, we can take a design beyond mere decoration in many ways and truly enhance its usability.

Branding Makes a Design Usable

If an element contributes to a website's overall branding, image or reputation, then it's safe to say that it contributes to its usability. Properly planned and executed branding is not superficial or decorative. Carefully chosen colors and graphic elements create an inviting atmosphere that leads the user to make easy decisions and helps them interact with elements smoothly and intuitively.

Look at the screenshot below from 10k Apart:

The laurel wreath in the background and the distinctive illustration immediately distinguish this website as belonging to A List Apart. Consistency in branding contributes to the usability of this ALA microsite and makes it feel inviting and familiar.

And then we have the beautiful and intuitive design for Launchlist:

This screenshot doesn't do justice to the website's look and feel; you'll have to poke around to really experience it for yourself. The design might appear decorative and superficial at first glance, but it's not. The elements work together to create a consistent and inviting atmosphere, extending the launch theme throughout with subtle animations.

Usable Doesn't Have To Mean Ugly

My purpose here was not to tell designers to forget about slickness, sexiness and beauty. This should be obvious from the beautiful examples shown, which certainly qualify as both usable and attractive. No one expects owners of beautiful websites to suddenly drop their enhancements in favor of the Craigslist look just to make them more usable.

Rather, this post is just a reminder that eye candy is important, but it isn't everything, and that for a design to be truly beautiful, it has to be functional, have purpose and contribute in some way to the website's intuitiveness, usefulness and branding. All of these things contribute to the overall effect of a design.

Related Posts

• In Defense of Eye Candy
  Research proves attractive things work better. How we think cannot be separated from how we feel. The next time a boss, client, or co-worker scoffs at the notion that beauty is an important aspect of interface design, point their peepers here.
• Looks Matter Because We All Have Feelings
  An article about the importance of aesthetics in web design.
• Stop Designing Aesthetics, Start Designing Emotions
  Gradients and colors and contrast are all good, but there's a more important side to web design that many people overlook most of the time: Designing emotions. A beautiful article on Web Designer Depot.
• Stop Inspiration Hunting When Designing
  There is definitely a difference between looking at sites for research purposes when beginning a design versus looking at sites just to find some cool stuff you might be able to use. Nice article on Drawar.
• Web Design? Screw Aesthetics
  When I talk about design I try to do more than mention the aesthetic/visual aspect of it, but it seems people tend to focus on that aspect the most. Web design however adds many more elements to the elegant answer that we are so frantically searching for. Another interesting article on Drawar.

(al)

Louis Lazaris for Smashing Magazine, 2010. | Permalink | Post a comment | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Stumble on StumbleUpon! | Tweet it! | Submit to Reddit | Forum Smashing Magazine
Post tags: Design, usability

I don't know about you guys, but I see way too much of this when I search Google lately.

Tonight I was looking for a particular frozen yogurt shop in Edgartown, which is a town on the island where my family has spent portions of the summer for the past 100 or so years. This was a relatively new shop, but not that new.

Anyway, we forgot the name, so I Googled "yogurt edgartown."

Here's what I got:

OK, none of the local results are even on the island, much less in Edgartown. So strike one.

I'm familiar with the first result below the map, but that's not the place I mean. Strike two.

The third result is clearly some kind of aggregator, but maybe they have an up to date directory I can look at. It's called "American Towns." I've never heard of it. Do I trust it? I dunno, maybe. So I click.

I get this:

Look at that for a minute. There's exactly ONE "organic" result on that page, and by the way, it's not what I'm looking for. The rest are ads that in no way help me.

This is not an unusual result for me lately. How about you? When it comes to finding places via Google, I'm not really feeling lucky anymore. Any suggestions as to what I should have done to find that yogurt shop?

Wait, I have an idea. What if Foursquare or Facebook had Places search? Man, that'd be great! I could search for yogurt shops in Edgartown, and I bet, without a doubt, I could find what I'm looking for. Do they? Nope. Should they? Yep.

Just saying.

Shared by M3wThr33
I NEED THAT SHIRT

Before you do anything else, watch the premiere video of code-name Project Icarus, the next game from Irrational Games that will land on the PlayStation 3 in 2012. The less you know before watching, the better!

We're pleased and excited to welcome Irrational Games to the PlayStation.Blog to reveal their latest project to PS3 fans. I was fortunate enough to get a few minutes to chat with Ken Levine, Irrational Games' creative director and a key force behind BioShock, in order to delve deeper into the details and inspirations behind the studio's latest creation. Welcome to the PlayStation.Blog, Ken!

Sid Shuman: So you guys know how to make an entrance, huh?

Ken Levine, Creative Director, Irrational Games: There's been so much speculation, we wanted to play with people's expectations a little bit. Coming out with a press release isn't very interesting. One of the reasons there's been so much secrecy is that we want people to see the trailer (above) prior to knowing what the game is.

SS: Your new game is quite a dramatic change from BioShock, isn't it?

KL: I think the mission of this studio is to make games that other people couldn't or wouldn't makewhen it comes to a BioShock game, the obvious thing people think about is the location. My sense is it's more about mystery. It is about location, but that location isn't Rapture.

We wanted to start this game with a sense of, there are no sacred cows. Anything from the existing franchise that would go into Project Icarus had to earn its way there. So there are obviously some similar elements. But there are also elements that you don't even know what to make of. That's important to us. There are so many things that are tropes of the BioShock franchise Big Daddies and Little Sisters wandering around, for example. But even something as primal and central as that, we thoughtis that the right thing for this game? Or do we want to take it in a totally different direction?

So Project Icarus is turning the page on the franchise and exploring a different direction.

SS: On that note, you couldn't really consider Project Icarus to be a sequel to BioShock. Do you think of it as a re-imagining?

KL: In the game industry, people have a particular sense of what a sequel is. You know, they're going to follow the story, it will be the same world, a lot of the same weapons

I guess re-imagining is a good way to describe it. Anything that was in the previous game has to earn its way into this game. We're open to explode any ideas, change any ideas, re-imagine any ideas. That's why we've been quiet for so long. That's a question we've had to wrestle with for a long time, and it took us a few years to get to the point where we were ready to talk about it. Now the team is super excited about it.

Once you make a game like BioShock, the audience expects to be surprised and amazed the same way they were by Rapture. We wanted to make sure we had something that felt familiar in some ways, but also felt different at the same time.

SS: Would you say that Project Icarus is in the same universe, or the same timeline, as BioShock?

KL: That's a good question. That's something that people should keep their eyes on once the gameplay footage comes out, there will be some things that will make people ask questions along those lines, and wonder about any of those kinds of connections.

SS: BioShock was highly notable for its Art Deco environments. But Project Icarus, with its flying city of Columbia, is something else altogether. What's the inspiration for the game's look?

KL: The feel of the game, as I described it to the team, is Fourth of July, 1900. The game is set in 1912 and has this feeling of an idealized America, a Norman Rockwell version of America. As with Rapture, there's a fantastic component the city is suspended in the air. But we wanted this feeling of this memory of a summer's day. Not even a real summer's day, because there's no summer's day with a sky that blue, or trees that green, and the flags waving, and the popcorn popping. That's the feeling that we wanted in this game, and it defines a lot of the look.

On a lower level, you have elements of Art Nouveau in the city, elements of colonial architecture styles in the city, and a variety of things. But they're all in service of this feeling. BioShock was the same way Art Deco gave us the feeling of what we wanted for that game.

SS: What brings the player to the airborne city of Columbia?

KL: One major difference from BioShock is that we felt it was really important that you are an actual person with an identity, with a mission that was clear to you. In this game you play a former Pinkerton agent named Booker DeWitt, who is known as a guy who gets things done, but maybe not in the most forthright manner.

You're contacted by an individual who wants you to go to Columbia, a city which has disappeared into the clouds. Columbia was founded as sort of a shining city on a hill, an example of American ideals Jeffersonian, Democratic ideals and the city would move around the world like the White Fleet. Like the Apollo space project, it was an example of what American ingenuity and ideals can do. The city, as it moved around the world, got caught up in a violent international incident that was shocking to the world. And then Columbia disappeared into the clouds, and nobody has known where it is for quite some time. The man who has contacted you knows where the city is, and he wants you to go there to find a young woman named Elizabeth. She's been imprisoned in a tower there since she was five years old, for 15 years, and your mission is to get Elizabeth out of the city and back to Earth.

When you arrive in Columbia, you sense this is going to be a different kind of mission. You also learn that Elizabeth is squarely in the center of a conflict that's going on in the city. And you get more than you bargained for.

SS: Some people might call Columbia a sort of New Rapture. Is that accurate?

KL: One is a city floating in the air, another lies at the bottom of the sea. But the feel of the cities, and the beliefs of the populace, are things that you can sink your teeth into. It's relatable: politics and culture. Like Rapture, Columbia is a city of ideas very strong ideas! And those ideas are represented by how the world is visually constructed. We don't always want to use words I think the visuals are the strongest element we have to communicate what Columbia is.

SS: In BioShock, the player enters a devastated environment and picks through corpses in order to find out what happened. But Columbia appears to be a very alive city

KL: This is very important to us, Sid. Going back to the System Shock 2 and BioShock days, we've given ourselves an out, which is everybody's dead. There wasn't much character interaction, and when there is I think I'm the guy who invented the [gameplay convention of the] player interacting with a guy on the other side of a glass. [laughs] I say that with dubious pride, because that idea is getting really long in the tooth.

Our concept in this game is that there are lots of characters who don't necessarily attack you right away they may not be interested in getting in a fight, either. The feeling we want is somewhat like the Wild West, where you go into a room and everybody has their hand on their gun because it's a scary place. Part of your challenge in this world is figuring out who is a threat and who isn't. Or, if you're in a combat situation, if there's a way to bring another person to your side somehow. We sort of pioneered this with BioShock with the notion of the Big Daddy, who didn't attack you right away, and here we've extended this idea throughout the world. We realized quickly that this is much more like the way the real world works. In shooters, we're not accustomed to that we're used to everyone seeing you and shooting you. From a narrative perspective, this gives us a ton of freedom.

SS: Based on the ultra-nationalistic posters I saw in the trailer, it would seem that the citizens of Columbia don't take too kindly to strangers?

KL: There's a mix in Columbia, and that's part of the conflict there. The city was designed as sort of an envoy of Americait parallels some of the conflicts in America, not just back then, but other times during our history. There are some strong viewpoints in the city; it's taken on a certain character in regards to the role of America and Manifest Destiny, and the city's role in the world.

SS: Will we still see returning staples of the genre, such as the audio diaries from BioShock?

KL: I'm a fan of the voice recorders for a couple of reasons. Our goal is always to see how much story we can tell in the world. Some things stick out like a sore thumb like the guys stuck behind glass windows. But some things are important tools that can flesh out narrative in a way you can't do any other way.

I like audio diaries, and I think we'll be continuing with those, but our goal is to expand upon that vocabulary. Another thing we thought that was getting a little old was the idea of someone in your ear, radioing you your mission. In this game, Booker will say, I need to find Elizabeth. Your character can define his missions, and interpret what's going on around him, and give feedback and drive his thoughts using his own voice. It makes you feel more active in the world.

SS: On another note, I heard you were at E3. Did anything catch your eye?

KL: I was only there for a day, and mostly in meetings, so I didn't get to see a ton. But I'm definitely interested in seeing what you guys are up to with PlayStation Movethere was a PSN game that really caught my eye, too, some kind of Gauntlet type of game (edit: we think Levine was talking about Hoard). Another one was The Magic: The Gathering Tactics. It seemed like a good year, there are a lot of core games coming out.

For more details on Project Icarus follow @IrrationalGames and Ken Levine on Twitter. And keep your eyes on the PlayStation.Blog!

Before you do anything else, watch the premiere video of the next game from Irrational Games that will land on the PlayStation 3 in 2012. The less you know before watching, the better!

We're pleased and excited to welcome Irrational Games to the PlayStation.Blog to reveal their latest project to PS3 fans. I was fortunate enough to get a few minutes to chat with Ken Levine, Irrational Games' creative director and a key force behind BioShock, in order to delve deeper into the details and inspirations behind the studio's latest creation. Welcome to the PlayStation.Blog, Ken!

Sid Shuman: So you guys know how to make an entrance, huh?

Ken Levine, Creative Director, Irrational Games: There's been so much speculation, we wanted to play with people's expectations a little bit. Coming out with a press release isn't very interesting. One of the reasons there's been so much secrecy is that we want people to see the trailer (above) prior to knowing what the game is.

SS: Your new game is quite a dramatic change from BioShock, isn't it?

KL: I think the mission of this studio is to make games that other people couldn't or wouldn't makewhen it comes to a BioShock game, the obvious thing people think about is the location. My sense is it's more about mystery. It is about location, but that location isn't Rapture.

We wanted to start this game with a sense of, there are no sacred cows. Anything from the existing franchise that would go into BioShock Infinite had to earn its way there. So there are obviously some similar elements. But there are also elements that you don't even know what to make of. That's important to us. There are so many things that are tropes of the BioShock franchise Big Daddies and Little Sisters wandering around, for example. But even something as primal and central as that, we thoughtis that the right thing for this game? Or do we want to take it in a totally different direction?

So Project Icarus is turning the page on the franchise and exploring a different direction.

SS: On that note, you couldn't really consider BioShock Infinite to be a sequel to BioShock. Do you think of it as a re-imagining?

KL: In the game industry, people have a particular sense of what a sequel is. You know, they're going to follow the story, it will be the same world, a lot of the same weapons

I guess re-imagining is a good way to describe it. Anything that was in the previous game has to earn its way into this game. We're open to explode any ideas, change any ideas, re-imagine any ideas. That's why we've been quiet for so long. That's a question we've had to wrestle with for a long time, and it took us a few years to get to the point where we were ready to talk about it. Now the team is super excited about it.

Once you make a game like BioShock, the audience expects to be surprised and amazed the same way they were by Rapture. We wanted to make sure we had something that felt familiar in some ways, but also felt different at the same time.

SS: Would you say that BioShock Infinite is in the same universe, or the same timeline, as BioShock?

KL: That's a good question. That's something that people should keep their eyes on once the gameplay footage comes out, there will be some things that will make people ask questions along those lines, and wonder about any of those kinds of connections.

SS: BioShock was highly notable for its Art Deco environments. But Project Icarus, with its flying city of Columbia, is something else altogether. What's the inspiration for the game's look?

KL: The feel of the game, as I described it to the team, is Fourth of July, 1900. The game is set in 1912 and has this feeling of an idealized America, a Norman Rockwell version of America. As with Rapture, there's a fantastic component the city is suspended in the air. But we wanted this feeling of this memory of a summer's day. Not even a real summer's day, because there's no summer's day with a sky that blue, or trees that green, and the flags waving, and the popcorn popping. That's the feeling that we wanted in this game, and it defines a lot of the look.

On a lower level, you have elements of Art Nouveau in the city, elements of colonial architecture styles in the city, and a variety of things. But they're all in service of this feeling. BioShock was the same way Art Deco gave us the feeling of what we wanted for that game.

SS: What brings the player to the airborne city of Columbia?

KL: One major difference from BioShock is that we felt it was really important that you are an actual person with an identity, with a mission that was clear to you. In this game you play a former Pinkerton agent named Booker DeWitt, who is known as a guy who gets things done, but maybe not in the most forthright manner.

You're contacted by an individual who wants you to go to Columbia, a city which has disappeared into the clouds. Columbia was founded as sort of a shining city on a hill, an example of American ideals Jeffersonian, Democratic ideals and the city would move around the world like the White Fleet. Like the Apollo space project, it was an example of what American ingenuity and ideals can do. The city, as it moved around the world, got caught up in a violent international incident that was shocking to the world. And then Columbia disappeared into the clouds, and nobody has known where it is for quite some time. The man who has contacted you knows where the city is, and he wants you to go there to find a young woman named Elizabeth. She's been imprisoned in a tower there since she was five years old, for 15 years, and your mission is to get Elizabeth out of the city and back to Earth.

When you arrive in Columbia, you sense this is going to be a different kind of mission. You also learn that Elizabeth is squarely in the center of a conflict that's going on in the city. And you get more than you bargained for.

SS: Some people might call Columbia a sort of New Rapture. Is that accurate?

KL: One is a city floating in the air, another lies at the bottom of the sea. But the feel of the cities, and the beliefs of the populace, are things that you can sink your teeth into. It's relatable: politics and culture. Like Rapture, Columbia is a city of ideas very strong ideas! And those ideas are represented by how the world is visually constructed. We don't always want to use words I think the visuals are the strongest element we have to communicate what Columbia is.

SS: In BioShock, the player enters a devastated environment and picks through corpses in order to find out what happened. But Columbia appears to be a very alive city

KL: This is very important to us, Sid. Going back to the System Shock 2 and BioShock days, we've given ourselves an out, which is everybody's dead. There wasn't much character interaction, and when there is I think I'm the guy who invented the [gameplay convention of the] player interacting with a guy on the other side of a glass. [laughs] I say that with dubious pride, because that idea is getting really long in the tooth.

Our concept in this game is that there are lots of characters who don't necessarily attack you right away they may not be interested in getting in a fight, either. The feeling we want is somewhat like the Wild West, where you go into a room and everybody has their hand on their gun because it's a scary place. Part of your challenge in this world is figuring out who is a threat and who isn't. Or, if you're in a combat situation, if there's a way to bring another person to your side somehow. We sort of pioneered this with BioShock with the notion of the Big Daddy, who didn't attack you right away, and here we've extended this idea throughout the world. We realized quickly that this is much more like the way the real world works. In shooters, we're not accustomed to that we're used to everyone seeing you and shooting you. From a narrative perspective, this gives us a ton of freedom.

SS: Based on the ultra-nationalistic posters I saw in the trailer, it would seem that the citizens of Columbia don't take too kindly to strangers?

KL: There's a mix in Columbia, and that's part of the conflict there. The city was designed as sort of an envoy of Americait parallels some of the conflicts in America, not just back then, but other times during our history. There are some strong viewpoints in the city; it's taken on a certain character in regards to the role of America and Manifest Destiny, and the city's role in the world.

SS: Will we still see returning staples of the genre, such as the audio diaries from BioShock?

KL: I'm a fan of the voice recorders for a couple of reasons. Our goal is always to see how much story we can tell in the world. Some things stick out like a sore thumb like the guys stuck behind glass windows. But some things are important tools that can flesh out narrative in a way you can't do any other way.

I like audio diaries, and I think we'll be continuing with those, but our goal is to expand upon that vocabulary. Another thing we thought that was getting a little old was the idea of someone in your ear, radioing you your mission. In this game, Booker will say, I need to find Elizabeth. Your character can define his missions, and interpret what's going on around him, and give feedback and drive his thoughts using his own voice. It makes you feel more active in the world.

SS: On another note, I heard you were at E3. Did anything catch your eye?

KL: I was only there for a day, and mostly in meetings, so I didn't get to see a ton. But I'm definitely interested in seeing what you guys are up to with PlayStation Movethere was a PSN game that really caught my eye, too, some kind of Gauntlet type of game (edit: we think Levine was talking about Hoard). Another one was The Magic: The Gathering Tactics. It seemed like a good year, there are a lot of core games coming out.

For more details on BioShock Infinite follow @IrrationalGames and Ken Levine on Twitter. And keep your eyes on the PlayStation.Blog!

Shared by Jeff
Zakaria is the man...

CNN host and Newsweek columnist Fareed Zakaria has returned a prestigious award given to him by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), saying he is stunned at their decision to oppose the construction of an Islamic community center near Ground Zero. From his column:

The ADL's mission statement says it seeks to put an end forever to unjust and unfair discrimination against and ridicule of any sect or body of citizens. But Abraham Foxman, the head of the ADL, explained that we must all respect the feelings of the 9/11 families, even if they are prejudiced feelings. Their anguish entitles them to positions that others would categorize as irrational or bigoted, he said. First, the 9/11 families have mixed views on this mosque. There were, after all, dozens of Muslims killed at the World Trade Center. Do their feelings count? But more important, does Foxman believe that bigotry is OK if people think they're victims? Does the anguish of Palestinians, then, entitle them to be anti-Semitic?

Five years ago, the ADL honored me with its Hubert H. Humphrey First Amendment Freedoms Prize. I was thrilled to get the award from an organization that I had long admired. But I cannot in good conscience keep it anymore. I have returned both the handsome plaque and the $10,000 honorarium that came with it. I urge the ADL to reverse its decision. Admitting an error is a small price to pay to regain a reputation.

On his CNN show this Sunday (which was pre-taped), Zakaria further says that he was personally and deeply saddened by the ADL's stance. In a response letter to Zakaria, Foxman writes, I am not only saddened but stunned and somewhat speechless by your decision.

You might remember when @Zee wrote about Historious back in the middle of July. At the time, he called it the bookmarking tool that he had been waiting for. Since then, many more have found out how awesome Historious is to use and have adopted it heavily.

I caught an announcement by one of the developers, last night, about some updates to the tool and thought I'd share them with you.

Improved Performance

At launch, Historious could only handle a few requests per minute. With new improvements to the hardware behind it, there has been a pretty vast improvement to the capacity of the service, and newly-bookmarked sites should be ready to index almost immediately.

OpenSearch Integration

You can now search your Historious bookmarks right from your browser's search bar. It's a pretty welcome addition, for those of us who rely on Historious heavily.

Public Bookmarks and Sharing

One of the most requested features was to be able to push your bookmarks out into the public. Now you'll be able to publish on any site and your bookmarks will appear in your public Historious page. The page can be broken down into keywords, which is invaluable for those who have literally thousands of bookmarks shared. If you've chosen to share your finds, people browsing your page can use the I'm Feeling Lucky button to be taken to a random bookmark in the public cloud.

Subscription Plans

Of course, all of this function doesn't come easy. For power users of Historious, there is now a subscription program that will open up some added features. While bookmarking of up to 1,000 sites is free (and should cover the vast majority of users), you can go up to 15,000 sites with a $3/month subscription.

The other features? Tagging, no ads and the ability to text search within PDF files. All of these are awesome, but the PDF text search is sure to set a bar.

Overall, these are some great and welcome features to an already-wonderful service. If you've not given Historious a try, it's high time that you do.

Original title and link for this post: Your favorite social bookmarking tool, Historious, gets some major improvements.

We lovingly craft reports every day. We try to make sense of what they are saying. When we hear nothing we try to bludgeon them, hoping for the best.

My hope in this post is to share some simple tips with you that might make your reports and analysis speak to you a bit more. Suggestions that might increase the probability that you'll bump into things that might be insightful, and communicate data more effectively.

None of them are very hard to do, but I think they make a world of difference.

Excited? Here we go. . .

#1: Go as deep as you can. Then, a little bit more.

Far too often in our daily lives we let our job titles limit how deep we go in our analysis.

For example let's say I work at a delightful car / health / spaceship insurance company. Naturally all of my analysis is focused on the efficiency of the website in moving the Visitors quickly from the landing page to click on that delightful Submit Quote button.

I am focused on what the site does because that is what my job title says: Web Analyst

I am analyzing campaigns (which ones convert better and which worse), I am looking a little bit at the bounce rates, and of course I am totally obsessing about my seven step quote submission funnel (and how to reduce abandonment).

Bottom-line: Quote, quotes, quotes.

And that is fine.

The data is easily available in the web analytics tool so why not.

Here's my advice: You should kick things up a notch. Don't focus just on the quote (the part the site does), include the final conversion to a paying customer (even if that data is offline).

The picture you get from stopping at Quotes might be very different from stopping at Policies Purchased.

Here's what you are focusing on (and it is good):

All my experience in these things suggests that it is dangerous to think that the Conversions column is representative of the final outcome.

Here is what it probably looks like (and this is going from good to great):

See how the ranking changed?

You would make different recommendations right? Would it save your company money? Would it make you refocus your efforts on where improvements are needed?

You betcha!

For straight ecommerce websites the first picture is what you use every day. But for most other types of businesses the final success does not exist in web analytics tool. So what? Get the data out of the crm / erp / "backend" system. . . dump it into excel. . . write a simple formula!

Usually you don't need a complicated multi year data warehousing effort with expensive business intelligence tools to buy. At least for this scenario you just need a column and a short movie data with your online IT person and a longish coffee break with your "backend" IT person to get the right primary keys set up. Then you can bring your sexy back!

Go deep.

You are paid to find real bottom-line impacting insights (remember line of sight to net income?). Do that.

If you are a purely ecommerce business then you can go a bit deeper too. Consider doing quarterly analysis that focuses on calculating customer lifetime value. Up a notch.

If today you are a content site that is only focused on measuring content consumed try to go deeper to understanding CPA of the ads or Visitor Loyalty. Once again going one step deeper, up a notch.

And so on and so forth.

Make it a point to pause every Friday at 0900 hrs. Look at your most important work / report / dashboard. Then ask yourself this: "How can I take my view of the data one step deeper?"

Now figure out how to do that. That'll impress me, your boss and your mom.

#2: Join the PALM club. [PALM: People Against Lonely Metrics]

This rule actually comes from my second book, Web Analytics 2.0. [Page 318, Principles for Becoming an Analysis Ninja, if you have the book already.]

The rationale for this rule, joining the PALM club, is quite simple.

You need a someone in your life. I need someone. Everyone needs someone else. A boy friend. A girl friend. A cat. A "you complete me" person.

So why not your metrics?

We do reports / dashboards like this one all the time:

Ok great.

I know the top referrers sending traffic to my site in a month. Maybe I can appreciate more the power of Twitter or google.co.in or whatever.

You might even impress me next month with a updated version of this where some of these might have shifted a bit up or a bit down.

I might not do anything with the data but you surely hypnotized me for a few seconds.

This is the problem with lonely metrics.

They don't have any context. They fail to communicate if 841 visits from Twitter were any good. In fact is any of the above good or bad? How do you know?

Why not find a BFF for your lonely metric and present something like this. . . .

Much better right?

I found a "you complete me" for my Visits metric, Bounce Rate.

Now in an instant I can not only see which referrers are big or small, I can see which ones are "good" or "bad".

I could have picked conversion rate as the bff. I could have picked % new visits. I could have picked connection speed or mobile platform or underwear size.

Whatever makes most sense for my business. But putting two minutes of thought into my metric would help make my report a little bit more useful.

Kick it up a notch. Right?

Never ever never never never ever present any metric all by itself.

If you want a cop out then at least trend it over time. If you actually want love then join PALM and don't let your metric be lonely.

Let me close with one of my favorite examples of this rule, this one's to inspire you if you have a pure content (non-ecommerce) website. . . .

Good to know what content's being consumed. Column: Pageviews.

Much much much better to know what the $ index value is for each.

See that crazy blue line that's literally off the chart? You would want to know that about the 1,414 pageviews right?

Now go find your dashboards, your reports, your data pukes (sorry!) and make sure that for every dimension you are not reporting success or failure using just one metric. Join PALM!

[Tip: Not that you are trying to but if you want to impress me but if you are then make sure the second metric you pick is as close to an outcome metric as possible. Or an actual outcome metric. I. Love. Outcomes.]

#3: Measure complete site success. Measure everyone's success.

One of my greatest passions when doing analysis is to look at the complete view of things. Rather than just the obvious.

An application of that passion is to look at all the jobs the website is doing, representing all the work that is being done by people in your company who touch the site.

Ecommerce is too easy an example of this so let me use a non profit example.

San Francisco Aids Foundation is a charity I support. It does incredible work to prevent new HIV infections.

The only way SFAF stays in business is if you and I make donations. As an Analyst I would focus all my energies on trying to figure out how many donations we are getting and where those people come from and what they are doing on the site etc.

But donations is just one measure of success ("macro conversion"). There are other jobs that the site is trying to do, and people who work on those jobs. So why not measure those?

For example. . . .

Measure the above four micro conversions, in addition to the macro conversion of donation, helps give a complete view of success. And what to do better.

Maybe Google is really good at Volunteers and not optimal for attracting people who donate. If you focus only on donations you'll devalue Google. Or maybe facebook is the best source for sharing information (downloads). And more such things.

Not only are you measuring all that matters. . . . you are validating the jobs of people who put together all that content.

Most of the time we don't do this. We, web analysts, just focus on one thing and then we wonder why we don't have the impact we want to, or why everyone does not pay attention to us.

Broaden your view!

If I were analyzing Amazon I would measure sales AND affiliate signups, signups for amazon prime, credit cards, wish lists, "like's" on reviews, self publish inquiries, free downloads.

If I were analyzing L'Oreal Paris it would be sales AND reviews, coupons downloaded, successful completion of "Profile My Skin", videos watched, sign ups for mobile alerts.

In both cases a complete view of the website and success of every person who works on the site.

Ninjas do that. You should too.

#4: Be smart about using time. Move beyond MoM.

This is one of the most common view of data presented in web analysis

The picture illustrates the performance of a metric over two consecutive months.

This is of course better than just showing data for June.

The problem occurs when you proceed to look at six such graphs on your dashboard and then proceed to use the trends to deliver insights. You are reading too much into the ups and downs, you are inferring things that might not even exist.

Two months do not a trend make. Important lesson.

Not even for the world's most flat line no seasonality business.

So here is a best practice. . . . at least add three months. . . . if the data looks like below you'll think one thing (and every different from above pic)

But if the data looks like the image below. . . . you'll think something else. . . .

Worry in one case. Jubilation for the temporary awesomeness for May in the other.

The more time you put into this graph (and if you have as much space as above you can easily add at least six months and it will still look pretty) the better.

But if I can only have three I love using current, prior, same month last year.

Better context right? Will take you off on a completely different line of inquiry, all from adding June 2009 to look at June 2010.

If June is the last month of your quarter and you have a cyclical business then maybe you want to compare Apr, May, June 2010 and have the first column be March 2010 because you want to see how the last month of this quarter did vs last month of the last quarter (because Apr and May don't really show if the trend ended as high or low as it should have ended).

So on and so forth.

Remember:

Sweet momma that is awesome!

Kick it up a notch, ok?

#5: Present data better, make insights obvious.

There are so many ways to present data that a small section of a blog post is insufficient. And of course there are so many people who are better at this than I am.

Let me just say that the way you present data matters, a lot. I'm not saying you should make it pretty. I could not care less if it is pretty or not. I'm saying present it in a way that the insights you think exist in the data become more obvious.

Here is a "data element", from an actual dashboard, that I really like. It might not be sexy but it is extremely functional and it is super awesome at communicating the smarts of the Analyst.

Three month trend for one very important business metric

First note that rather than just showing one column for the performance of this metric it shows four. One for each key segment of the customer that the company has.

This would require you to know the business (good thing), know its customers (great thing) and track the segmented data. IE have your act together.

Second note that the data is for three months. You could show more but in this case you don't want to overwhelm the Executive. If you go more months, shrink the segments.

Third, really important, note that the overall goal is clearly indicated in the picture. 80. And to get that number you would have to talk to Finance and Marketing and HiPPO's and get an agreement up front. This is absolutely magnificent, key to you building relationships and finding insights.

The nice thing about our picture above is that the overall metric would get averaged out and show a trend similar those we showed in tip #4 above.

But would it be insightful enough? A single metric trend would hide insights.

In this case it is pretty clear that Blue, Red, Green segments are doing fine. In fact the one that is absolutely most important, Green, we are doing ok.

The stink bomb in the pile is Purple. It has been dragging the overall metric down (and you know that even if the overall metric is not even shown!).

And you know how much gap you need to overcome for each segment, and were to prioritize your work (PURPLE!!).

This is just one tiny, I call it "functional", way of presenting data.

The presentation is ok, could be made more pretty.

What's precious is the process that went into creating the element talking to leaders, meeting with Finance and Marketing, identifying the key metrics, finalizing customer segments, and establishing goals.

We often don't do all the above work (the things that are mandatory for data driven organizations) and even if we do it we don't show it because we show lame single line graphs.

Don't do that.

Kick it up a notch. You are working very hard at your job, make sure your work shows up and helps identify better insights.

Those were the five simple things you can do every day to make the most of your daily data analysis. They are not very hard to do, and they'll pay outsized dividends.

I am not someone who leaves the good enough alone. No sirree bob!

With love and affection here are 4 more bonus tips on improving your analysis and truly kicking things up a few notches:

#6: Leverage segmentation, daily.

All said and done the number one way to move from being a Reporting Squirrel to an Analysis Ninja is to leverage segmentation. Every tool has on the fly current and historical segmentation feature set. Use it.

I'll honestly not respect anyone is not applying at least some primitive segmentation to their data.

Learn how to:

~ Web Analytics Segmentation: Do Or Die, There Is No Try!
~ Google Analytics Releases Advanced Segmentation: Now Be A Ninja!

#7: Move beyond the top ten rows of data, seriously.

The "head" of your data will sustain finding insights for a month or two. You might even action something. The real gold lies in your ability to analyze tens of thousands of rows of data at one time. It is harder to do, and hence the rewards are bigger and your competitors will eat your dust more.

Learn how to:

~ Analysis Ninjas: Move Beyond The Top Ten. Find Love (/Insights)
~ Make Web Analytics Actionable: Focus On "What's Changed"

#8: Perform "pan-session" analysis, and win big.

One of the absolute criminal behaviors in web analytics (and indeed online marketing) is that we are so obsessed about Visits, and visits based analysis.

Few people sleep with you on the first date. So why is that your mental model?

Every true Analysis Ninja focuses on measuring customer behavior of one person (or in our case Unique Visitor) over the entire span of that person's interaction one our website.

Hence my devotion to measuring Days and Visits to Purchase. Truly analyzing how people buy. Or analyzing Visitor Recency and Visitor Loyalty to understand now just the first Visit (and conversion) but rather subsequent Visits (and conversions).

I tell you this is honestly kicking your web analysis up five notches, not just one.

Learn how to:

~ Measure Latent Conversions & Visitor Behavior
~ Measure Days & Visits to Purchase

#9: Evolve to multichannel analytics, achieve analytics nirvana.

There is perhaps nothing harder and nothing more impactful than getting good at multi-channel analytics.

Measuring the offline impact of your online activities gives your business a view of success that is truly orgasmic. If you get good at measuring the impact on your website of your offline activities (television, catalogs, billboards etc) then you have truly accomplished the rarest of the rate.

Learn how to: Multichannel Analytics:

~ Tracking Online Impact Of Offline Campaigns
~ Tracking Offline Conversions. 7 Best Practices.

Feeling like an Analysis Ninja already?

Of course not, you have to go do all these things! :)

Remember that tips 1 through 5 you should be able to do quite easily, just need to remember them and remember to use them. Tips 6 through 9 take time, they take a lifetime. Remember them, practice when you have time and slowly evolve over time.

Ok?

Good luck.

As usual it's your turn now.

What are your favorite tips for data analysis? When you present data what is the "trick" that you use most often to be awesome? Have you used any of the tips above? Got any favorites? What do you think it takes to morph from a Reporting Squirrel into an Analysis Ninja?

Please share your feedback / critique / tips and all via comments.

Thanks.

5 + 4 Actionable Tips To Kick Web Data Analysis Up A Notch, Or Two is a post from: Occam's Razor by Avinash Kaushik

I was recently asked at a communications and marketing conference for senior executives when Social Media would start to appeal to all senses including, vision, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. It was an interesting question and the first time that I had heard it in public. My response was that it is already in full effect. To go one step further, much of the work I've studied and also the focus of much of my own work fuses aspects of sensory branding and marketing with elements of experiential and emotional marketing to appeal to the senses as well as to the emotions that inspire action.

In marketing today, it's less about what we say about us and more about what people hear, feel, and in turn, say about us.

The Me in Social Media

While the culture and corresponding dynamics and mechanics of social media remain elusive to many executives and marketers, its purpose and promise are far more profound than we may realize. To that end, I believe that in order to unlock the methodologies and philosophies tied to effective and long-lasting social media strategies, we must remove our marketing capes and instead remember who we are as individuals. There's a me in social media for a reason and that is because everything in social networks and online for that matter, begins with us. We define our own experiences. We decide who we follow and who follows us. We choose which stories we read and those we share. And it is only those experiences that we connect with emotionally that compel us to push across our social graphs.

Before we are marketers, sales or service professionals, executives, employees, or leaders, we are human beings. And social media equalizes the playing field for media consumption, production and distribution. We are the champions who introduced businesses to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, et al. We disrupted marketing. We disrupted communications. We disrupted media. More notably, we are affecting the very foundation of business itself by influencing the evolution of its culture, mission, purpose and how it communicates with its markets. You, me, and everyone with whom we connect online are no longer an audience for messages and gimmicks. We are no longer voiceless and faceless consumers who react quietly to public information. We are now part of the media ecosystem. And, we are stakeholders in the online communities where we define experiences and outcomes.

To connect with the social consumer here and now, we must be part of the community. We must approach business and the business of marketing and engagement with the same resolve we approach our own social networking. We must become the very people we're trying to reach, because ultimately, we are consumers and we are stakeholders in the evolution of our social relationships and experiences.

Social Media is Rich with Emotion

As we are at the center of our individual experiences, social media then naturally becomes powered by emotion and all that moves us. If you love something, share it on Twitter. If something inspired you, blog about it. If an incredible event is unfolding before you, capture it on video or still and upload it to YouTube or Flickr. If someone captured your attention, connect with them or link back to their post or profile. What's shared across each of these scenarios is the feeling that motivates us to publicly react. When I refer to sensory and experiential marketing, it is for this very reason. People are emotional creatures and their actions and decisions are driven by a combination of experience, education, instinct, and emotional intelligence.

For those who venture boldly into the very public universe that is social media, we slowly trade privacy for recognition, gaining confidence with every response, new connection, comment, retweet, and like we earn. We transform into digital extroverts intentionally or subconsciously seeking affirmation in all that we do, and it's seductive, educational, and fulfilling when we learn how to manage and invest in our role in these new online societies.

Indeed there is an addictive quality to online interaction. While science is long tied to more personal forms of commercial engagement, we now have a new study that shows that emotion is indeed tied to social networking.

Rude Lovers

Adam Penenberg a contributing writer to Fast Company volunteered as a test subject in Dr. Paul J. Zak's neuroeconomics research, an emerging field that combines economics with biology, neuroscience, and psychology. The studies seek to gauge the relationship between empathy and generosity.

In a series of studies spanning nine years, Zak found that Oxytocin (aka the cuddle drug, not the pain killer Oxycontin) is not only the hormone that forms the bond between mothers and their babies, it is as Zak says, the social glue that adheres families, communities, and societies, and therefore acts as an economic lubricant to engage day-to-day transactions. Zak's work has essentially recognized oxytocin as the human stimulant of empathy, generosity, trust, among other important social attributes.

Penenberg connected with Zak to learn if Zak's research on oxytocin is applicable to social media research. In fact Penenberg's experience is fascinating to me in more ways than I could possibly share. I too have long theorized that social media IS driven by emotion and as such, the interaction and relationships in which we place great value is indeed rooted in biology. And as such, we can learn from the behavior that ensues through not only biology, but other social sciences such as anthropology, sociology, ethnography, and psychology.

Penenberg's telling post in Fast Company is worth the read, but in his own words, he summarizes the findings that should have massive implications for the future of socialized media, all of this research reinforces the idea that we are biologically driven to commingle, and suggests that online relationships can be just as real as those conducted offline. He continues, social networking may increase a person's oxytocin levels, thereby heightening feelings of trust, empathy, and generosity.

In fact, in a series of three experiments in social networking, specifically with Twitter, Penenberg's oxytocin levels jumped 13.2% while hormones related to stress waned. Zak concluded that Penenberg's brain, interpreted tweeting as if you were directly interacting with people you cared about or had empathy for.

Will Work for Empathy

In my experience, empathy is a powerful ally and catalyst for sparking meaningful interactions and relationships in social media. Individuals online are empowered and as such, their attention focuses on those who can demonstrate an awareness and understanding of their interests, challenges and options. Empathy is detectable and contagious.

To garner empathy, we must feel that moves our communities and markets. To do so, we must transcend listening and monitoring into a form of kinesthetic analysis to truly become the people we're trying to reach.

I'm not just listening to you, I hear you. I see and feel what you're saying.

If we look to forms of interpersonal, sensory, and experiential marketing, the cornerstone of connectivity is built upon meaning, relevance, and purpose. As such trust becomes a measure of metric to weigh our participation efforts and emotional marketing value (EMV) ranks our ability to demonstrate empathy and earn attention, support, and affinity. This insight should absolutely change how you approach social media, from design and imagery to intent and communication.

Source: Advanced Marketing Institute

As businesses seek to establish presence and prominence within these social networks, a sense of persona, character and purpose proves paramount. Those in charge of outbound strategies will have to expand their communications prowess with an understanding of digital sociology and psychology.

The Social Marketing Compass

As we plan for meaningful social media engagement, our strategy should be woven by a fabric of ethics, purpose and principles and bound by salient business goals and objectives. Inspired by a moral compass, I created The Social Marketing Compass, again with the artistic talents of JESS3, to serve as our value system when defining our program activities. The Social Compass made its debut in Chapter 21 of Engage!.

A compass is a device for discovering orientation and serves as a true indicator of physical direction. The Social Marketing Compass points a brand in a physical and experiential direction to genuinely and effectively connect with customers, peers, and influencers, where they interact and seek guidance online.

The socialization of the Web is powered by people and as such, it's held to the same natural laws and rules that govern human behavior. The outer ring of the social compass guides brands from targets to technology to connection with emotions and empathy serving as the final step to engagement. Successful branding is magnified when individuals can establish a human and emotional connection. In social networks, the brand is represented by you and for that reason, we must factor in compassion, care, and feeling into our planning. Connect from the heart.

Behaviorgraphics: Visualize the Me in Social Media

Behaviorgraphics examines the me in Social Media. While it's avatars that capture our attention, it's personality that captures our heart and mind.

Social media tests the filter that divides inner monologue from disclosure. As our thoughts become words online, they color our avatars and profiles with a glimpse of our personality who we are online and in the real world. Over time, it is how we put our words into action that establishes our character. And, it is our character, through the marriage of our words and actions that paves the way for relationships and opportunities. At the center of behaviorgraphics is benevolence. The unselfish and kindhearted behavior that engenders and promotes recognition and reciprocity, and in doing so, earns the goodwill of those around them. This is the hub of social networking with a purpose, mission, and a genuine intent to grow communities based on trust, vision, and collaboration.

Visualized once again, with the help of JESS3

Influence is distributed across segmented personality traits and categorized by the prominence within specific nicheworks linked by interests. Activating social networks and the people within them is an act of communication to form an association. Therefore, we must understand much more than how content attracts varying levels of behavior, but also surface the personality characteristics of the people we're hoping to establish connections and relationships.

In many ways, we become social psychologists and linguists who can speak to individuals in manners that appeal to their demeanor. And, since each of us are also consumers, we find ourselves not in any one group, but at any point in time, we can identify with several traits based on our engagement in varying circumstances.

May I Have Your Intention Please

As actions speak louder than words, intention also speaks volumes. While my work has not involved a lab such as Zak's, it has experimented with the idea of connecting with individuals based on empathy and recognition in order to earn awareness, consideration and ultimately trust. It is the basis for my focus on R.R.S. (relevance, resonance, significance), social media's new critical path. Without relevance, we cannot trigger resonance, and without resonance, we cannot establish significance. As such, in social media, we earn the relationships, responses, and trust we deserve as measured through the emotional vibrations that reverberate across social graphs.

Now, once more with feeling

Connect with Brian Solis on Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Google Buzz, Facebook

Engage! was written to help you find answers to your questions and the questions you didn't yet know to ask

Get Putting the Public Back in Public Relations and The Conversation Prism:

Lead Image Source: ShutterStock