donloeb.com

interesting new yahoo SERP - completely different design. and, yes, includes their new auto suggestions feature…

is anyone else seeing this?

congrats to frank, jen, and the rest of the folks on the aol personalization team…today, aol launched a beta version of their new my aol page. what i like is that it’s actually not just a new version of my aol….which frankly wouldn’t be that interesting. instead, they’ve also included a full-text rss reader with integrated bookmarking and a very visual content recommendation service called magnet.

so, in this version, they’ve combined a dashboard-like “my” page with a full-content experience and then layered on sharing tools and a discovery engine…they have some work to do, but you can definitely see where they are headed…

btw, they were smart to launch a completely separate recommendation service and make it visual and entertaining. it’s very stumbleupon-like…that’s good as they need to introduce the concept and work out the kinks before they alter the main user experience…

i love facebook…i really do. and, i think their strategy (re openness) is spot on. however, i’m sick of the application notices and requests. my news feed (which used to be very useful) is filled with app additions and deletions. when i went to fb yesterday on my way to work (thanks gbus!), only 8 of the 21 news items were actual updates from friends (too bad i can’t control these like i can other news story types). and, then, check out the “requests” i’m getting to try out new apps…ughh…at least i can ignore these easily as they are in a separate section…

facebook is basically a simple, fast, & uncluttered communications tool…the folks at facebook know this and have gone to great lengths to make sure it doesn’t turn into a free-for-all like myspace. however, with the f8 platform, they’ve introduced some new problems. so, let me be very clear: (1) i want to know what my friends are doing (i.e, in their lives) and not which apps they are adding (perhaps a separate section for apps notifications?) and (2) apps are only really useful to me when a critical mass of MY friends have them - don’t forget that. that’s why facebook photos is great even though it lacks key features. or, status works better than twitter, etc…everyone has these apps…

hopefully, facebook will do something to rein this in…i’m sure they’ll figure it out as they have a great team and are laser-focused on the user experience…

ps - read the posts from susan and fred on facebook status updates and twitter…i completely agree - it’s just too bad i can’t easily find the updates…

so, i’m running into a meeting, but wanted to do this quick post. today, we made two of our premium services (total stats pro and mybrand) free…yes, free…

publishers now get access to our advanced stats (reach, item level info, etc.) and the ability to keep their own url (feeds.donloeb.com instead of feeds.feedburner.com).

very very exciting…thanks google :)