Great reading on social networks and new media

My favorite blog right now is the wonderfully titled Alexander van Elsas’s Weblog on new media & technologies and their effect on social behavior.  I'm struggling to keep up with all the great things that Alex writes, so I wanted to give a quick summary of some my favorite posts here, as an introduction and to get my own head around it!

In Facebook will be no match for Google, he talks about Google's recent purchase of the social conversation site Jaiku, as well as Google's own social networking venture called Orkut.  Alex makes some really great points about why he thinks Google has a much better understanding of social networks than Facebook does:

Google doesn't have to build a social network as its primary strategy. Unlike Facebook, Orkut is simply another means to an end. Google is the connectivity on the web, and Orkut only is one aspect of that strategy. Think Gmail, think Google earth, thin iGoogle. All major Internet platforms than can easily be integrated into one compelling service for the user.

He closes with this excellent observation:

While Facebook is building walls around their service, trying to increase the value of their network (instead of value for its users), Google is becoming the major operating system on the Internet (Search, Social Networks, mail, RSS) and Mobile (Google Phone, Jaiku). Given this strategy I would put my cards on Google, not Facebook. No way they will be able to match that. The big question now becomes whether or not Google will be able to integrate all these services and still remain open as a platform thus providing more value to its users.

In The end of a defensive music industry era he examines Radiohead's decision to let fans decided what to pay for their music -- which I agree is a good idea, however from an earlier post I do wish they had a better site for this...

And finally, in 10 ways to improve web 2.0 and move into an era of true interaction, he continues a discussion that I got involved in last week as well, and makes some really great points about how to get to the next evolution of the web.

Check out Alex's blog and subscribe to his feed -- he's a smart guy and we can all learn from him!

Radiohead's great idea ruined by bad user experience

Radiohead is practically giving their new album away for free in an interesting experiment where they allow buyers to make up their own price for the album -- even if that price is zero.  I am very interested to see how this turns out and what the median price is going to be, but before they can sell any of the albums, they need to be able to get users through their site!

I was surprised to see UX Magazine's short but glowing review about the site Radiohead set up to allow users to buy the album.  They say that it "tells the story clearly but keeps a stylish edge."  I personally don't think it does either of these things.  Of all the screen shots I can show to prove my point, I'll settle on this psychedelic beauty:

I'm assuming the colors mirror the cover art, so let's forget about that for a minute.  The bigger problem is that it takes quite a bit of playing around to figure out what is going on here.  You can either order the "Discbox" at a fixed price, or make up your own price for the download option.  But the interface doesn't tell you this until you're right in the middle of it, and even then it's not very clear:

The basket simply has an open text box and a question mark which tells you "it's up to you" when you click on it (if you're wondering, clicking on the question mark on the second screen assures you, "No really, it's up to you").  Now, I'm all for quirky content, but this is just a little bizarre.  And I'm not just saying that because I've been on the site too long and the colors are giving me a headache -- the navigation is really quite strange and labyrinth-like.

Anyway, I think this is a great concept -- let's see what happens when we let music-lovers determine the value of the music they listen to.  My guess is that die-hard Radiohead fans will be willing to pay a lot more than the curious masses saying to themselves, "Can I really get this for free"?  But maybe that's the way it should be -- let the fans support you, and be confident that casual listeners will turn into die-hard fans once they listen to your stuff, and then they'll pay you next time.  If only they would get the user experience right...