We're about to debut some really exciting features here at Tribe, and I wanted to provide a little background on what we're doing. Our big release next week is just the first step in changing both the way people will be able to use the site, and in how we'll be able to add new features.
In terms of the user experience, the Open Profile is our way to tackle one of the original problems that we came together to solve: how do we accurately represent a person online? Our first cut involved taking some of the most popular features of the social networking websites: photos, personal and professional bios, testimonials, and friends. To this, we added groups, which we thought was a natural -- most people are defined to some degree by who they hang out with.
As we tracked other phenomenon on the web, and watched our own site grow, we noticed a few things. The first is that there are plenty of other ways to describe a person: photo albums, blogs, playlists, wishlists -- the list goes on. We knew that our first version of the profile was good enough to support other activities on tribe.net. However, we quickly realized that the simple modules we had built couldn't compete with deeper products that were getting better all the time.
Secondly, we saw no two people express themselves in the same way. And while a cookie-cutter solution would work in a product where an online identity was an afterthought (the "About Me" page on a blog, for example), you really can't apply the dreaded 80/20 rule when identity is the true focus. For identity, realism is in the nuances and the details.
The designer in me was frustrated in how the product wasn't accurately solving one of its key challenges. The (much younger and less experienced) developer in me recognized the long and torturous road ahead, if we chose to continually upgrade our own services to provide the unlimited personalization that I believed to be the answer.
After talks with Brian, Paul and other technical members of the team, and an off-site with those of us in the product group, a solution began to emerge -- one that would solve a lot of our problems:
1. We'd get out of the social network feature wars
2. We'd open the door to unlimited personalization
3. We'd get back on track to providing true value as an identity system
4. We'd devise technologies at an entirely different level than our competitors
What we've essentially done with the new Open Profile is completely reinvent it: rather than being a static collection of information, entered and maintained only on tribe.net, the Open Profile is a framework that points to any number of sources of information. This collection or aggregation of information is what we think will be really exciting: in one fell swoop, you'll be able to select any combination of your information to represent yourself, as well as use your favorite services to manage that information. If you like to use Ofoto to manage your photos, go ahead. Amazon for your wishlist? Blogger for your blog? Just do what you normally do to keep that information current, and then point your tribe.net profile to those sources to keep it automatically updated. And if you already have your content in tribe.net's photo albums or other modules, you can still show them on your profile like you always have.
[For us, this became literal thinking outside the box. We stepped out of the thin grey lines that enclosed our own tribe.net modules, so to speak, and figured out how to sidestep the whole game.]
There are other benefits to this open scheme as well. We've redesigned the presentation layer of our system, to present profiles in a truly modular fashion. This means that you'll be able to move content around, to put the most important items where your readers will be sure to see it. This modular approach allows us to enable you to have much more control over other aspects of presentation, including selecting exactly which items go into each module, how they're titled, and whether modules are expanded or collapsed when users view your profile. We've also designed everything with an eye for style customization, and you can look forward to selecting from a range of alternate styles to find the one that matches your own.
For those interested in the lower-level guts of the system, I'll let Brian pitch in with an explanation. I can tell you this: the Open Profile is not just about the user-facing, consumer experience. From the beginning, all of it is designed to work in the emerging world of content syndication and aggregation. Where we can, we'll support RSS and other standard methods of streaming data in, and when we can't, we'll write a custom plug-in to handle the task. And once we pull information in for our users, we'll make it available as standards-compliant feeds (at our user's option).
This is just the first step. The true power of the Open Profile will be revealed in successive releases, which will highlight some key infrastructure-level features. We have a long list of modules that will incorporate many of the popular and emerging services on the web, so that our users will be able to pick and choose whatever information that best reflects their personalities. We are also considering making the technology open in another sense: we'd like to make a toolkit available for our dedicated users who would like to write their own modules for interfacing to their own favorite web services.
Perhaps most exciting is what the Open Profile's core technologies mean for the rest of tribe.net. You can only imagine what a modular presenation layer and a standards-compliant, flexible data in/out layer will do for other parts of the site.
So there you have it. When you see the new profile in its preview release next week, for many of you it will look basically the same as it always has. This is so that users can preserve the tribe.net that they know and love, and then opt in to the new profile. I suggest you do opt in, and play around with the system -- it's the best way to get a sense for the new world that's coming.
In terms of the user experience, the Open Profile is our way to tackle one of the original problems that we came together to solve: how do we accurately represent a person online? Our first cut involved taking some of the most popular features of the social networking websites: photos, personal and professional bios, testimonials, and friends. To this, we added groups, which we thought was a natural -- most people are defined to some degree by who they hang out with.
As we tracked other phenomenon on the web, and watched our own site grow, we noticed a few things. The first is that there are plenty of other ways to describe a person: photo albums, blogs, playlists, wishlists -- the list goes on. We knew that our first version of the profile was good enough to support other activities on tribe.net. However, we quickly realized that the simple modules we had built couldn't compete with deeper products that were getting better all the time.
Secondly, we saw no two people express themselves in the same way. And while a cookie-cutter solution would work in a product where an online identity was an afterthought (the "About Me" page on a blog, for example), you really can't apply the dreaded 80/20 rule when identity is the true focus. For identity, realism is in the nuances and the details.
The designer in me was frustrated in how the product wasn't accurately solving one of its key challenges. The (much younger and less experienced) developer in me recognized the long and torturous road ahead, if we chose to continually upgrade our own services to provide the unlimited personalization that I believed to be the answer.
After talks with Brian, Paul and other technical members of the team, and an off-site with those of us in the product group, a solution began to emerge -- one that would solve a lot of our problems:
1. We'd get out of the social network feature wars
2. We'd open the door to unlimited personalization
3. We'd get back on track to providing true value as an identity system
4. We'd devise technologies at an entirely different level than our competitors
What we've essentially done with the new Open Profile is completely reinvent it: rather than being a static collection of information, entered and maintained only on tribe.net, the Open Profile is a framework that points to any number of sources of information. This collection or aggregation of information is what we think will be really exciting: in one fell swoop, you'll be able to select any combination of your information to represent yourself, as well as use your favorite services to manage that information. If you like to use Ofoto to manage your photos, go ahead. Amazon for your wishlist? Blogger for your blog? Just do what you normally do to keep that information current, and then point your tribe.net profile to those sources to keep it automatically updated. And if you already have your content in tribe.net's photo albums or other modules, you can still show them on your profile like you always have.
[For us, this became literal thinking outside the box. We stepped out of the thin grey lines that enclosed our own tribe.net modules, so to speak, and figured out how to sidestep the whole game.]
There are other benefits to this open scheme as well. We've redesigned the presentation layer of our system, to present profiles in a truly modular fashion. This means that you'll be able to move content around, to put the most important items where your readers will be sure to see it. This modular approach allows us to enable you to have much more control over other aspects of presentation, including selecting exactly which items go into each module, how they're titled, and whether modules are expanded or collapsed when users view your profile. We've also designed everything with an eye for style customization, and you can look forward to selecting from a range of alternate styles to find the one that matches your own.
For those interested in the lower-level guts of the system, I'll let Brian pitch in with an explanation. I can tell you this: the Open Profile is not just about the user-facing, consumer experience. From the beginning, all of it is designed to work in the emerging world of content syndication and aggregation. Where we can, we'll support RSS and other standard methods of streaming data in, and when we can't, we'll write a custom plug-in to handle the task. And once we pull information in for our users, we'll make it available as standards-compliant feeds (at our user's option).
This is just the first step. The true power of the Open Profile will be revealed in successive releases, which will highlight some key infrastructure-level features. We have a long list of modules that will incorporate many of the popular and emerging services on the web, so that our users will be able to pick and choose whatever information that best reflects their personalities. We are also considering making the technology open in another sense: we'd like to make a toolkit available for our dedicated users who would like to write their own modules for interfacing to their own favorite web services.
Perhaps most exciting is what the Open Profile's core technologies mean for the rest of tribe.net. You can only imagine what a modular presenation layer and a standards-compliant, flexible data in/out layer will do for other parts of the site.
So there you have it. When you see the new profile in its preview release next week, for many of you it will look basically the same as it always has. This is so that users can preserve the tribe.net that they know and love, and then opt in to the new profile. I suggest you do opt in, and play around with the system -- it's the best way to get a sense for the new world that's coming.
posted by:
|
SF Bay Area
|
