Mint Digital

Our latest session interviewing MySpace teens turned up a bit of a different pattern of MySpace usage. Check out the contrast with a previous, perhaps slightly male-dominated session here.

Main use of MySpace The girls we interviewed this week said they spent around 70% of their time on MySpace looking at the profiles of and communicating with people they know well. They communicate through private messages, public comments and a bit through their blogs.

Minor uses They spend about 20% of the time finding new bands and listening to music. The remaining ten percent or so is divided between surfing profiles of those they don’t know at all and keeping in touch with those they know vaguely offline.

No time spent on profile, then? They put absolutely minimal effort into their profiles. So they either have a profile with basically no information and no design, or have a more complex one that they did put some time into originally but now don't bother to modify. Despite (because of?) being good-looking in person they have only jokey, appearance-obscured photos on MySpace.

Jokey eh? In fact irony and in-jokes play a huge role for much of the time they are on the site. Sarah described what they do on MySpace as “just joking, just messing around. The comments we leave are pointless, really”. Katie echoed this, “It’s just a big joke. We use it out of boredom”.

So why not just use email or SMS? MySpace is seen as being more convenient for communication. Also, particularly leaving a friend a public comment is seen as more enjoyable than, for example, an SMS text. One of the group, though, still uses email as much as MySpace for communicating with friends.

What’s the most important thing on a profile? The song… although that can be a joke too.

Attitude towards MySpace? “If everyone keeps themselves to themselves then its great” said Sarah, “I am wary, but that goes with everything on the internet”. This group didn’t feel guilty about spending time on MySpace. The feeling was that although from one perspective using MySpace could be thought of as a waste of time, at root it is good fun.

Will you still use MySpace when you are 30? “Probably. It’s a fantastic way of having a laugh… plus I’ll use it for music”.

MySpace friends? Meeting people through MySpace? They would never communicate (now) with people they haven’t met. All get a steady stream of friend requests from strangers, but either delete them without looking at them or leave them unopened. “In the early days” (i.e. 8 months ago), one girl met someone who has now become a collaborator in music and good friend offline, but that could never happen now.

Other social-networking sites? Bebo had never been used by any of them. Faceparty and hi5 had been used for a little while but no longer: “MySpace is where my friends are”.

"So, the thing you do most on MySpace is check out profiles of people you don't know. Do you ever communicate with any of these people?" "Never!"

Breakdown of time spent on MySpace (figures are percentages, names are changed)

Attitude towards MySpace? People are slightly embarrassed/ guilty about spending time on MySpace. A few hours spent on MySpace is seen as wasted time. Someone might sarcastically joke when going home from pub, “I am going on MySpace now”, because its kind of a sad thing to do. Charlie feels he has kudos from having deleted his MySpace account.

Meet new people through MySpace? Very rare. Only Charlie met someone for real having first met them on MySpace, and that was something to do with music. Fred spends time communicating with MySpace-only friends, but could never imagine meeting them in the flesh.

Develop peripheral friendships through MySpace? This seems to be a way MySpace changes peoples’ offline lives. It’s possible to develop a friendship with someone you met briefly at a pub/club. Phoning would be too much. But you might become friends with them through communicating on MySpace.

How do users surf? Often/usually they spend time looking through friends’ networks of friends and then those peoples’ friends, with no interaction. Usually limit it to people in the same geographic area. So if they reach a profile of someone who lives far away, they will retrace their steps to return to profiles of local people. Mostly surfing seems to be about checking out how good-looking people are.

What’s the most important thing on someone’s profile? Definitely the photo.

Useful tools? You can save as ‘favorites’ profiles you like to look at (without the people who own those profiles being informed). Fred didn’t know this but was very excited on hearing about this tool. Also, they thought being able to see number of times a profile has been viewed would be a good feature.

How realistic are profiles? Users very selective about photos they use. People always significantly less good-looking in real life than on profile.

MySpace also used for? Charlie said the one thing he will miss is not being able to keep track of club nights and bands on MySpace. Lucy used MySpace a lot to check out clubs and pubs; what’s on, opening hours, entry price.

Attitudes towards businesses using MySpace for marketing? Not worried about it at all. No feeling of intrusion. Users often hear about things being marketed through ‘bulletin’ on MySpace homepage (e.g. X-men), but easy to ignore.

Use MySpace in 10 years time? Charlie said “I don’t have time to have a life and be on MySpace”. They indicated they only used it because they had a lot of time on their hands. None could imagine spending much time on a social networking site when they are 30.

Other social networks? Basically they just use MySpace. Charlie and Fred thought Bebo maybe for younger people. Lucy hadn’t heard of Bebo.

Emails enticing you to join social networking sites… Considered really annoying. Charlie said if he received such an email he will delete it straight away and make a point of not joining the site concerned and advised us, ‘Stay away from emailing people’.

Promotion of social networking sites in other ways? They were of the opinion that either a site would work organically, or not at all. Advertisements for a site would make no difference.

Use of MySpace forums and chat-rooms? None of 3 used these.

On 19th July, 100 or so interested parties from broadcasters, TV production companies, web firms, newspapers and advertising agencies travelled to UGTV '06 from as far as Germany and Spain to meet, chat, eat, drink and discuss. Some highlights from the speeches:

Gavin Newman, Deputy Head of Interactive, Trouble TV

Gavin talked about Trouble Homegrown.

Trouble Homegrown is a website that gathers and makes available for view user-generated video clips. It is part of Trouble TV which is a British satellite/cable channel aimed at 15/24 year olds.

Trouble is one of four channels owned by Flextech, which is itself owned by Telewest.

Gavin was charged with making Trouble first-to-market in the UGTV field.

The thinking behind the website was to give viewers/users as broad a brief as possible and see what kind of video they came up with.

So far footage uploaded to the Trouble Homegrown website has been used in continuity slots on the TV channel, but soon there will be a half-hour programme every week showcasing the best of the submitted clips.

Also the website is being used to select contestants for "Bump & Grind", a talent show on Trouble TV.

He said making the website "was not easy". It could not just be bought off-the-shelf [...at that time, he hinted that if he was starting the project now he would use BloomBox - Ed] and so had to be made bespoke.

Another point he made was that the technical quality of clips has not been much of a problem - the clips on TV "look great". In fact, that they are a little low-fi and not glossy works well.

All uploaded video is screened - in fact watched all the way through twice - by outsourced moderators Tempero - before being put up on the website.

At present there are 5000 clips on the site with another 200 being added every day.

Matthew Kershaw, Head of Interactive, MTV Networks UK & Ireland

Matthew Kershaw (standing in for Angel Gambino) said MTV, with its upcoming major user-generated initiative, is basically 3 months behind Trouble TV.

MTV aims at the same demographic as Trouble and so he was heartened by the apparent success of Trouble Homegrown.

MTV has been a pioneer of viewer-interactivity, via texting and message boards (for example, one show has a presenter who reads out a lot of message board content).

Up to now MTV has had websites about channels (and it also has MTV Overdrive, a website which is a channel) but having a channel about a website is completely new.

He reckons the key is to be a facilitator - a crucial part of the success of MySpace is that it hasn't tried to dictate what its users do.

Also, Matthew related hearing a 14-year-old talk about how a video-game triumph seemed meaningless because there was no one watching him do it. "Kids don't want to do anything without being watched".

He talked about how we are now seeing a 'long-tail for celebrities' or 'niche celebrities'. There has been a proliferation in the number of celebrities in the last five years and perhaps user-generated content can be expected to accelerate this trend.

Nevertheless though its great to be famous in an underground community, people would much prefer to be famous on TV. That's still seen as real fame. In the same way even though the Arctic Monkeys had a high profile on MySpace, they still wanted a mainstream record deal. Getting your footage onto a channel is like getting into the VIP room of a club.

Matthew talked about the legal problem he sees UGTV as having. He said ripped-off content is not such a big deal for websites, which can just take the offending clip down when notified, but it is a big deal for broadcasters. Once such a clip has been shown on a TV channel, the rights' holders will be owed possibly a lot of money. Equally, he said the RIAA is "on the warpath" right now about publishing rights violations in all the user-generated videos that involve lip-synching.

He said UGTV is not just a fad. He brought up the example of talk radio, which has stayed with us despite all the competing forms of media. He said ultimately being able to create your own content taps into a fundamental human need, the need to communicate.

Tim Morgan, Commercial Director, Mint Digital

Mint's very own Tim Morgan explained how producers and advertisers can easily solve the technical side of any project involving user-generated footage by using BloomBox. I'll limit what I write about this speech for fear of casting doubt on the objectivity of this blog, but suffice it to say that it was pithy, uproariously funny and extraordinarily well-received.

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A big thanks to Dug Falby from Donkey on the Edge. The three smaller photos are taken from his UGTV '06 Flickr photoset.

Mint's site for Nudo was featured on the respected Signals vs Noise blog. These dudes are like the daddies of web design, so we were very happy to get the mention.

The Click #13

You're skiing. It's snowing hard. The mist is thick. Sound is muffled. You keep going, gingerly hoping for a tree or a marker, anything to give you your bearings. Then you think "Am I actually moving?"

A bad website can be just as disorientating.

A good website, on the other hand, makes it obvious where you are and where you are going - this is an essential part of the website designer's skill.

FreshDirect is a good example. What do they do right?

1. Conventions are followed The logo is top left. The background is white. The header stays the same from page to page (with the section highlighted in orange - giving you an immediate sense of location).

2. Clear, consistent titles Clear titles make it obvious what page the user is on. In the example, both the section title 'SEAFOOD' and the subsection title 'FISH FILLETS' are prominently displayed.

One gripe. 'Fish Fillets' in the subsection navigation doesn't look selected. Minor inconsistencies like this cause confusion.

3. Seven plus or minus two is the magic number Human short term memory has a limited capacity: 7 items plus or minus 2. Navigation should have no more than nine items (five can be the limit, if the items are particularly abstract or diverse.

Being a big site, FreshDirect has several main navigation bars (listing by product type, by dietary requirement, etc.), but each has 9 items or fewer.

The way the items are split isn't perfect (you might argue that wine should be in the products navigation bar) - but it successfully breaks the information down into human sized chunks.

4. All information is not equal FreshDirect has corporate information and a 'Special note for AOL users' at the bottom of the page. Unless your site is a company brochure, people come to the site to get a job done. Admin can be relegated to the footer.

5. It reads from left to right Jobs that need to be done last (for instance, dealing with the shopping cart) are best placed on the right.

Conclusion Making sites easily navigable takes hard work. If there's one principle, it's 'Don't make me think'. The less you make your visitors think, the more they can concentrate on what they came to do.

The Click #009

The web is all about words. Design may look nice but it is effective copy that enables you to achieve your goals. (Noam, Mint's creative director, might disagree, but...)

Lots of people who'd never have written for the public 10 years ago now contribute to websites. If you find yourself in such a position, here are seven tips:

1. Make it scannable People often don't read web pages, they scan them. Sub-headings, bolded text and numbered lists work well. On the front page have lots of small bits of copy with links to the full articles.

2. Don't boast Big claims can make readers doubt what you are saying. Often good is good enough - you don't try to hire the world's best babysitter or accountant - and it's much more believable.

3. Be human Firms don't do business with firms. People do business with people. Demonstrate you are human with jokes, stories and by admitting weaknesses. (For big firms this is a tricky job best left to professionals. For small firms, it means just be yourself.)

4. Omit needless words Reading on the web is slow (25% slower) and scrolling is a hassle, so this rule is even more important than it is in print.

The big problem is knowing which words are needless. Two bits of advice have helped me. First (from Steve Krug) is write a draft, wait a week and edit it to a quarter the original length. It's a harsh discipline but it works. Second (from Richard Gabriel) is read poetry. Well... I struggled. I've learnt more from studying tightly written factual books. Two I'd recommend are The War Against Cliche and The Language Instinct.

5. Imagine you are in a pub The web is an intimate medium. Speak to each reader individually, in the second person singular. Imagine how you'd explain your point over a pint. You'll naturally make it interesting. You'll avoid the airy generalisations that are the bane of web writing.

At Mint, twice we've made big improvements to a client's front page by replacing the happy talk with an edited version of what they'd told us in the first 5 minutes we met them.

6. Write great headlines John Caples, a copywriting legend, devoted more than 50% of his time on a project to perfecting the headline. Most readers read the headline and nothing else - so make sure it communicates something valuable.

A cracking example is this classic from David Ogilvy: "At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock".

7. Use testimonials Getting to be believed is a huge problem. Testimonials are often the solution. Also, they are likely to be read - they are tasty bite-sized morsels.

My favourite testimonial of all time is for VOIP application Skype. "I knew it was over when I downloaded Skype," from Michael Powell, chairman of Federal Communications Commission. If you can get the head of the trade body that you're competing against to say something like that, you don't need any advice from me.

In conclusion There aren't any shortcuts. More than anything, effective writing takes practice.

If you've got a tip you've found useful, we'd love to hear it. Email: andy@mintdigital.com

When I started Mint Digital, I was inspired by this article by Seth Godin. He suggests:

You say to the prospect: I will work with you to build a four-page engine of revenue. The idea: the client loads it up with targeted traffic that he buys by regularly trying and testing adwords and other relevant, measurable media. Then, I will regularly, constantly tweak (or redesign) the four page site to turn those strangers into friends (and maybe, if your product is great and your followup is appropriate, you can turn those friends into customers).

The thing is, it's probably cheaper to constantly measure and evolve and redesign a four page offer site than it is to build the annual 400 page website overhaul. And there's no question it's more effective.

It takes patience. It takes a lack of ego. It takes a willingness to be creative and to try new stuff, to measure what works and to do it more.

So far we haven't met anyone who'd be up for this approach. In fact, we've haven't found a client who it would be suitable for (though we have discussed the idea with a couple...).