Users love the “like”, “share” and “tweet” buttons

So how does it work? Just place the social buttons on your Joomla website. When users click them, they’re taken to the social media site (usually Facebook or Twitter) where they can post the link and even add a few words about the article. Their friends and followers can see the link and click through to the site. Brilliant!

Get free traffic with social media

There are two ways to add social buttons to your Joomla site:

Use a module

If you want to promote the entire site, rather than specific articles, you can install a Joomla social bookmarking module and place it “above the fold.” Your visitors won’t be able to miss it wherever they are on your site.

Use a plugin

If you want allow users to share specific articles, install one of the many available Joomla plugins that place social media buttons automatically on your articles. Some extensions even allow you to choose the sections and categories on which the plugin appears.

Here’s a video that explains how to add a social media module to your website. There are several available that work in roughly the same way, but PGT SocialWeb is my favorite.

Adding a social media module to your Joomla site:

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/23812794[/vimeo]

This is how you do it:

1. Download and install the PGT SocialWeb module.
2. Go to Module Manager.
3. Filter by pgt.
4. Open the module and change the title.
5. Disable the title and enable the module.
6. On the right, hide all the buttons except for “share” and “tweet.”
7. Select “home page” as the URL.
8. Save/Apply.

Adding a social media plugin to your Joomla site:

To use a plugin that allows users to share specific articles, download any of the Joomla Social bookmarking plugins. You can find a full list here.

Do you use social bookmarking on your Joomla site? What’s your favorite module/plugin?

Almost as satisfying as sticking your tongue out at Facebook

I’ve been bitching about the Facebook user experience for a while now, and things just seems to be getting worse. Maybe it’s the Law of Attraction: the more you focus on something, the bigger it gets.

Now Facebook has rolled out a new mailbox feature that is so flawed it will require its own blog post. In the meantime though, I want to share with you an incredible tool that’s almost as satisfying as sticking your tongue out at Facebook – and a lot more effective.

I wrote about Facebook’s usability issues some time ago. The main issue with Facebook is the enormous amount of garbage and uninteresting information that rolls through the stream on your home page. It shows everything from who joined which group, to who friended whom, and who scored how much in what networking game.

But I don’t want to know that stuff. All I really want to know is what my friends are saying or posting. I want to see their status updates, the links they want to share, and the videos they recommend. I don’t want to know how their farm is doing.

Facebook home stream shows everything from who joined which group, to who friended whom, and who scored how much in what networking game

So when Facebook added a filter to the top of the stream page, I was a very happy social networker… until I saw it in action. It lets you show only status updates or only photos, or only links, from everybody or a certain group. That should be great. But it isn’t.

I don’t need to show only one thing at a time and I don’t want to have to filter to see it. I want to choose what I see and what I don’t see! If I don’t want to see who befriended whom, I should be able to simply check a box and hide that information.

I don’t need to show only one thing at a time and I don’t want to have to filter to see it

The Solution: F.B. Purify Plugin

So after my last post regarding the most annoying Facebook behaviors, a few readers suggested I try  www.fbpurity.com. It doesn’t fix all Facebook’s usability disasters, but it does make the experience A LOT nicer!

FB Purity is a browser plugin that seamlessly cleans up your Facebook interface. You can install it on Firefox,  Google Chrome,  Safari and  Opera but not on Internet Explorer —another good reason to abandon this horrible browser!

Once installed, just open Facebook and… hey presto! You’ve got a clean stream. Even the ads on the right are gone! No more ads for “serious adult singles” for me.

And it’s easy to roll back. If you happen to miss all that garbage information or if you’re worried someone might have beaten your Mafia score, you can always click “show” to display those posts. If you still want to see which groups your friends join, that’s not a problem.

It’s easy to roll back. Just click on the "show" links, to see what you're missing

Clicking the F.B. Purity link allows you to control exactly which information to show and which to hide: a real dream come true! Your stream – your control!

Clicking the F.B. Purity link allows you to control exactly which information to show and which to hide

I highly recommend that you install this plugin today, and start enjoying some relief from all that Facebook noise and clutter. Live long a clutter-free Facebook stream!

That still leaves the question though of why this feature isn’t part of Facebook. Why do we need to install a plugin to control our pages.

Have you tried FB Purity? What do you think about it? What would you want to add to it?

Facebook does however allow you some flexibility in what you see on your home page. It’s not enough flexibility but at least you can hide friends that annoy the hell out of you with their clueless Facebook etiquette.

What can make you hide a friend from your Facebook home page? I asked my own Facebook friends and added my own peeves to this list of top 14 annoying Facebook behaviors. If you want to keep your friends on social media, you need to keep an eye out for these Facebook faux pas.

1. Stream-hogging

When someone posts so many times during the day that when I log in all I can see is their status updates, they’re stream-hogging. You don’t need to announce what you’re doing minute-by-minute. You have other friends and they have other friends, so don’t overdo it. Keep your updates to maximum of three or four a day — and keep them interesting!

2. Using an obnoxious photo as your profile photo.

Don’t impose a bad photo on people or they’ll simply hide your stream

This one is a total deal-breaker for me. Some people think it’s amusing to post an obnoxious image as their profile photo. Maybe it’s funny the first time but when we have to see the photo again and again, it becomes less amusing and more… well, obnoxious. Be considerate. Don’t impose a bad photo on people or they’ll simply hide your stream.

3. Being overly negative.

Yes, I get it. Sometime life can be tough and it’s nice to get support from friends and family on Facebook. But when you do this on a daily basis, you become an “energy vampire,” sucking all the joy out the site.

We want to be exposed to positive, happy people not downers who want to drag us down with them. So if you’re always feeling sad, please, open a self-help book and pep yourself up. Keep those depressing status updates to a minimum.

4. Sharing automated updates.

Please don’t post your game results, daily horoscope or any other uninteresting automatic status updates daily. Because, you know, we really don’t care. We don’t care about our own horoscopes, and we definitely don’t care that you just broke some record we’ve never heard of on a game we don’t give a toss about. Just don’t.

5. Checking in everywhere you go.

Yes, Facebook’s check-in feature is cool and I do use it sometimes. But not all the time! I really don’t want to stalk you and frankly, where you are eating lunch is not that interesting. Unless you’re having lunch with Steve Jobs, in that case, please say hi, wish him well for me and ask him when the next iPad is coming out.

6. Using all caps.

Using all caps makes you look like you’re yelling

This is a big “no  no” in every communication platform, including email, but it’s especially bad etiquette on a public forum. It makes you look like you’re yelling. Also, that you haven’t finished elementary school. Steer clear of the caps lock key. Very clear. If you want to emphasize something, place asterisks around it. It’s pretty too.

7. Posting the same thing again and again… and again.

Telling us that you’re “going to work” or asking “is it Friday yet?” might be cute the first time. By the tenth time, we’re yawning. On the eleventh, we’re hiding the feed. Of course, once everyone has done that, you can repeat yourself as often as you want.

8. Posting your bra color or revealing where you place your purse.

I know it’s supposed to be for a good cause (although how it helps beats me – I was aware of horrible diseases before) but it’s just too much information. Especially the purse thing that makes us think you’re telling us where you like to have sex (“I like it on the dining table!”). What a better way to start a morning than to visualize a middle-aged friend having sex on the table where we had dinner last week. If that doesn’t put you off your Corn Flakes, nothing will.

9. Trashing someone from your community.

It’s totally okay to trash Paris Hilton; that’s what she’s there for

It’s totally okay to trash Paris Hilton; that’s what she’s there for. But please don’t trash your teachers, your local rabbi and especially not your friends. It’s bad taste and makes you look unpleasant. After all, if you trash them, how will I know you won’t be trashing me next?

10. Sending greetings.

Saying “Good morning, Facebook friends” and “Good night, Facebook friends” every day is really not interesting. Also, it makes you look like you have no offline life. We really don’t need it. Just tell us when something interesting happens. We can wait.

11. Shameless self-promotion.

Vote for my band! Read my blog post! Buy my product! Facebook can be a business platform and promotion is acceptable if done once in a while (maybe once a month). But when it dominates your stream and all we get from you  is self-promotion, it’s really not friendly. It’s like going to a bar and telling everybody about your latest network marketing scheme. That’s a huge turn off, and it will get turned off.

12. Having too many friends.

When you have 500 or 1,000 friends, that’s a pretty good sign that Facebook for you isn’t personal. It’s a place to promote, and the chances you will see my status updates among all the others are pretty small. It’s a lot like having a conversation with someone who insists on doing all the talking. I want to talk to someone who listens and treats me as an individual.

13. Re-inviting your friends to your fan page.

I got the invite the first time. If I was interested, I would have joined the page then. Feel free to invite me once if you think the page might appeal, but if I didn’t join, assume the answer was “no, thanks.”

If you know the answer is “no” that’s a waste of time and effort for both of us

14. Inviting me to events that I couldn’t possibly attend.

So you’ve put together a fundraiser, a launch, a barn-raising party or who knows what, and you’ve decided to invite your Facebook buddies. If you think they could be interested, and if they live within a reasonable mile radius, that’s fine. But if the event is in a different state, let alone a different country, why ask me? It’s just yet another thing I have to respond to, and if you know the answer is “no” that’s a waste of time and effort for both of us. But thanks anyway.

So now you know. Next time you wonder why nobody is responding to your status update (they all hid you) or why that friend un-friended you, it was probably one of these.

What’s your favorite Facebook peeve?

( If you like this post, please feel free to post it on your Facebook page, let’s make Facebook more pleasant for everybody!)

My Facebook profile without photos on top

A few weeks ago, I explained why the new Facebook profile doesn’t work. One of the main issues was the photos that show at the top of the profile seem totally random and are very distracting. A friend pointed that hovering over the pictures pulls up a “close” button that lets you replace the photo with a different one. Once I realized that I wasn’t stuck with the photos Facebook selected for me, I started to wonder what would happen if I just kept clicking that close button until there were no more photos to display.

As it turns out, a good thing happens!

if you keep clicking the close button, eventually the photos disappear and you gain a much cleaner profile page.

Then I wondered what would happen if I did the same thing with the rest of the information Facebook places at the top of the page. I really don’t want my details there, so I went to my “edit profile” page and deleted or hid everything. Again – success! Take a look at this video that documents this process. My excitement is evident.  I apologize for the sound quality.

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/19130565[/vimeo]

It took about five minutes for me to create a cleaner profile page. If the photos and information bother you too, give it a try!

It’s a neat little trick but the question remains: why do we need to work so hard to feel comfortable with our profile? Why isn’t Facebook giving us more options to control which information is showing where, and why isn’t the company admitting that its latest profile re-design is a total disaster.

What do you think about having your photos on top of the profile? Would you follow the above process to remove them?

****************

Edited a few hours after posting: My facebook photos are back on the top of the profile. I guess Facebook *really* wants them there. Sigh. I had to do the whole process again and the photos are gone…for now.

****************

Second update: Facebook kept putting back the photos. I ended up un-tagging myself from all the photos and even that didn’t entirely work, they just posted some un-tagged photos. Removed those now and so far my photos are still gone.

The new and not improved facebook profile page

Continuing our discussions about companies that seem to be run by monkeys is… Facebook. It’s not that I doubt Mark Zuckerberg’s genius or that Facebook revolutionized the way we connect with friends and family, but some of their user experience decisions really make me wonder. If I had to describe them in one word, it would be “juvenile.”

Why juvenile?

Because the people in charge of the changes seem to have no basic understanding of what Facebook members need or want, nor of basic design principles. It’s as though they’re following a whim rather than tracking user actions.

I’ve already written about the 14 biggest usability mistakes on Facebook. Nothing has improved since then. But a few days ago, Facebook rolled out a new profile page. In my opinion, it’s another huge step back in the user experience.

Let’s go over the new page from top to bottom and dissect it to find out why it doesn’t work.

Putting Common Knowledge at the Top

At the top of the page, we have the name — that’s good! — followed by a few details about who this person is in a relationship with, their birth date and education. This part of the page is the most valuable “real estate,” the area that everyone sees every time they look at the profile.

It’s now showing content that rarely changes and that friends and family already know — and it’s showing it ALL THE TIME. Every time I go to this person’s profile, I’m going to see the same information about them. Dear Facebook, this is my FRIEND. I already know who they are sleeping with, and their date of birth.

Dear Facebook, this is my FRIEND. I already know who they are sleeping with, and their date of birth.

On a public social network like LinkedIn, where I view a lot of profiles of people I know nothing about, it is helpful to include basic information at the top of the page (well, except for the relationship bit). It helps me to absorb quickly the basic information I need to determine whether I should do business with them.

But Facebook is a closed membership site. We use it to view profiles of friends and family, people with whom we’re already familiar. Showing basic information that doesn’t change at the top of the page makes no sense at all.

On the old profile, basic information like this was on the left side of the page, which made a lot of sense. It wasn’t in your face each time you visited the profile but it was there if you were looking for it.

Displaying Distracting Pictures at the Top

Under the relationship, education and birthday information, we bump into a bunch of what appears to be random pictures of this person taken from their albums. Again, it really begs the question: WHY? Photos grab attention and distract us from what we really came to do. That’s not to look at an old picture that we’ve already seen, but to see what’s new with our friend, what they’ve been up to lately, what’s on their mind. None of those things is likely to be a ski trip from 1997.

This collection of photos is so distracting and so in your face. It’s like someone jumping in front of you as you try to greet a friend.

Photos grab attention and distract us from what we really came to do

Sharing is Harder

Moving down, we see “Share: post, photo, link, video.” The box that allowed us to enter a comment just by clicking on a box and hitting Send is GONE. Now I have to find the share area and realize that I have to click on “post” before I can write anything. These are just way too many unintuitive steps for doing something that’s very basic.

The old comment box was one of the things that made Facebook such a success. Its simplicity had a huge psychological effect, encouraging people to send quick notes and stay in touch. Having a photo right next to that box was also important. All this is gone now, leaving us with tiny links under random photos that overshadow them completely. Now the feeling is that we need a reason to write.

The old comment box was one of the things that made Facebook such a success All this is gone now, leaving us with tiny links under random photos that overshadow them completely.

No Important Info on Top

Moving further down the page, we notice that we’re missing some useful tabs: walls, photos, info, links. Those tabs were taking us to the information we really needed when visiting someone’s profile — the stuff that changes regularly — and they were right on top, where they should be. But now they are on the left, under the photo, a less important region. The main spot is taken by those old vacation snaps.

It’s pretty basic stuff: put the important information top-center. Put the less important stuff on the left or bottom. Put the call to action at the top-right. It’s the ABC of user experience.

On the left, I can see who my friend is in a relationship with, and this time I can also see a picture of their partner; before it was just a link. That’s an improvement but do I really need to have this at top-center as well?

It's pretty basic stuff: put the important information top-center. Put the less important stuff on the left or bottom. Put the call to action at the top-right. It’s the ABC of user experience.

List of Friends Take More Space Than Necessary

Below the partner, I can see a list of friends, as before, but now instead of seeing six thumbnails that took a small amount of space, I get a list of TEN friends with names and picture, one after the other, that take a huge amount of space. Again, WHY? On average, people have about 150 friends. Since there is no way to show all those friends on the profile page, displaying just a small sample makes sense. Why show a much bigger sample in a format that takes a lot more space?

I do like the separate family list though. That’s useful. But the list of friends and family together is so long that you barely notice the links under them.

Why show a much bigger sample in a format that takes a lot more space?

Call to Actions Are Hard to See

On the right, moving the “chat,” “send message” and “poke” actions to the top right makes sense as far as usability is concerned but the photos to the left and under them make the actions hard to see.The 30 pixel gap below helps a bit though.

The photos to the left and under them make the actions hard to see

The Facebook profile page is the site’s most fundamental feature. Since people spend more time on Facebook than any other site on the Web, it’s important to get it right and not annoy them with visual noise and misplaced priorities. Making sure that the most important elements are top-center, that there are no distractions in the form of photos, that it doesn’t take too many steps to perform the most common actions, and that basic information doesn’t take prominence are all key to doing it right. In fact, the way it was before. Why fix something that’s not broken?

In other words, fire the current designer and hire back the previous one… with a bonus!

I am not sure how Facebook is making these decisions, but I seriously doubt it involves Usability Testing. Any reasonable tester would have been able to catch these snafus.

Here are some of the most annoying features of Facebook with suggestions of how they can fix them. I just hope someone at Facebook is reading this…

1. I Don’t Care Who You’re Friends With

Facebook’s home page tells me everything that happens to my friends.

But I don’t want to know everything that happens to my friends.

Do I need to know if my friend is now friends with someone I’ve never heard of? Do I need to know if they’ve joined a group of fondue-dipping chocolate lovers? Maybe, especially if they’re sharing the chocolate, but I want to choose what I see on the home page — and what I leave out.

A couple of versions ago, Facebook only showed the status update of friends. Those were the days…

Suggestion: On the Settings page, add a list of all the possible status types and let me choose the ones I want to see.

2. Comment Spam

Sometimes I’ll see a status update that makes me want to comment or mark as “like.” That’s fine. That sort of easy contact is part of what makes Facebook fun. But once I’ve done that, I receive a notification every time another comment comes in after me. I can turn off the email notifications but not the site notifications.

Hit “like” or make a quick comment and it haunts you for days and sometimes weeks. I now find myself thinking twice about responding to friends’ posts for fear of being over-notified.

Suggestion: Forum software got this one right. Forums allow users to unsubscribe from a thread so that they no longer receive notifications. Facebook can implement the same thing easily. Just let me choose whether I want to unsubscribe after I post or “like” a status update, or allow me to unsubscribe from all future notifications of this post.

3. Chain Emails

Chain emails sent to dozens of people at a time have become a thing on Facebook. It’s not always a terrible thing — I don’t always mind it — even if it does increase the chances that I’ll eliminate this “friend” from my Facebook contacts. The problem though is that whenever someone responds to the message, it goes to everyone on the list. So now I have to read all the personal exchange between people on the list even if it’s not directed to me. Even if I delete the email, I still can’t get away from it.

Suggestion: When replying to a chain email sent to more than one person, let the sender ask whether they want everybody to receive the reply or just the sender. Or let me “unsubscribe” from this email thread.

4. Unstoppable Friend Suggestions

Facebook wants us to take every opportunity to make new friends. The site suggests new people based on common contacts. Sometimes though, these people are not my friends for a good reason. Do I really need to see their face every time I log in?

The Close button helps but only for that session. The face is back next time I log in. It’s distracting, annoying and not necessary. Frankly, I’d rather see an ad in that spot.

Suggestion: Allow me to completely turn this feature off on the Settings page, and when I close a suggestion, Facebook should never offer me that contact again.

5. Chat Duplicates

I’ve placed my Facebook friends on different lists so that I can manage them better. That was a nice touch. But some friends are on more than one list. When chatting, I can find myself talking to the same person in three places. Talk about confusion! Friend lists are a good thing. Friend lists on chat, not so much.

Suggestion: Allow users to turn off grouping on chat.

6. Every Road Leads To Home

This is probably the biggest mistake in Facebook’s latest revision. On previous versions, a bar at the bottom of the page allowed me direct access to groups, marketplace, and other pages. This bar is gone. Now if I want to access any of these pages I have to return to the Home page first and look for it on the left. Instead of clicking once to get where I want, I need to click twice.

When you use an application this much, all those unnecessary clicks quickly build up to unnecessary frustrations.

Suggestion: Return that navigation bar or add menu items to access all pages from anywhere.

7. No Notifications On Business Pages

I’ve created pages on Facebook for both my businesses, and I post news about them there for my customers. However, when someone places a comment or asks me a question, I don’t receive a notification. I have no idea that anything has happened. The customer thinks that I’m ignoring them or that I don’t care about their question.

I receive a huge number of useless notifications on Facebook, but this one is important  — and it’s missing.

Suggestion: Add notifications on pages I own or admin, and let me turn them off on the Settings page if I want to.

8. Guess The Icon

Another bad new feature is those strange icons at the top left of the screen. Not only are they hard to see but the icons themselves don’t represent the pages they take us to. The messages icon looks like a chat icon. The notifications icon looks like… a glob? The friends request icon looks like it leads to a list of friends — which it should do but the only way to get to that page is through the Home page.

In fact, what are the chances I really need to access a “friends request” page? I can approve/ignore friends requests by clicking on the link in the email notification. Someone at Facebook though has decided that this one feature is important enough to have its own real estate — and more important than the actual friends page. That someone is very odd.

Suggestion: Make these icons easier to read with more relevant graphics, and replace the “Friends request” icon with “Friends.” If you really want, Odd Someone, you can show me the friends requests on the friends page.

9. Idle Friends Still Chatting

When I click on Chat to see who’s available, I can see many friends marked with a gray dot, indicating that they’re not currently active online. So why do I need to see them? Why not only show me the people that are actually available to talk?

Suggestion: Let me choose whether I want to see idle friends by picking an option on Chat settings.

10. “Go on, make friends. Don’t be shy!”

Facebook doesn’t think it’s enough to give me a tool to manage my social life. It thinks it should manage my social life for me as well by prompting me to talk to friends with whom I have little interaction. “Say Hello, write something on their wall,” Facebook tells me. But I don’t want to! If I wanted to write something, I would. Stop bugging me, Facebook!

Suggestion: Allow me to completely turn this feature off.

11. Where Did My Friends Go?

Clicking on the “Friends” link to see my list of friends is always disappointing. What I see instead of my friends are links to:

• Find friends
• Friend suggestions
• Search for people
• Find people you IM

But I don’t want any those things. I want to see my friends.

Facebook’s priority is to grow by allowing the user every possible way to find and add new friends. But what about what the user wants? Isn’t that a priority?

In fact, clicking the Friends menu item opens options to see “recently updated” friends and “Status update.” Friends are grouped under those options… but I still can’t find a full list of all my friends.

Suggestion: Allow direct access to a full list of friends.

12. The Neverending Page

This is obviously a new trend: Twitter does it and now Facebook does it too. We used to have pagination on pages with a lot of content. Some content would show on page one, older content on page two, and so on. If you wanted to access the last page, you just clicked “Last.” The new, trendy way is to allow users to click a link marked “older posts” which then show up magically under the newer posts.

There are advantages. In particular, you don’t have to wait for a new page to load to keep reading. But if you happen to navigate to a different page, perhaps to look at a linked image, when you return to the long page, you’re right back at the beginning.

And what if I want to access very old posts? Pagination lets me head straight to the last page. With “older posts,” I could be clicking for hours.

Suggestion: Improve technology to remember my last place. Or just bring back pagination!

13. A Video Is Not A Link

When I want to add a video from YouTube, intuition tells me to click the “video” icon then choose “video from external site.” Not on Facebook. To add a YouTube video I have to click the link icon. It makes no sense at all.

Suggestion: Do the obvious thing: let me add a video by clicking the video icon!

14. Bouncing News

Facebook’s home page offers two options: “Top News” and “Most Recent.” I really don’t know how Facebook determines top news, or even why they call it “news.” To me — and to everyone else, I think — they’re “status updates.”

Whatever Facebook calls it though, I just want to see the most recent posts by my friends. I can do that by clicking the “Most recent” link but whenever I return to the home page, the option bounces back to “Top News.” Does Facebook really want us to see what they think we should see?

Suggestion: Get rid of this duplicity and just show me the most recent status updates. Or let me keep the option I choose.

——————–

Because Facebook is used frequently, it’s very important to get the user experience right. But it does give the company a little room to add features that require learning. The “hide” or “delete” buttons that only show when the user hovers over the stream, for example, is not user-friendly but users have learnt it.

Facebook has to get out of its own head and start doing some serious usability testing. The company needs to think about what we want rather than what it wants. The suggestions I made here are not that hard to implement, and all they do is give users the options to make their experience better.

Are there any other facebook features you find annoying? Please comment below…

• Who’s friends with whom
• Who joined which group
• Who commented on what
• Etc.

It’s been very distracting to see all this instead of what I was really interested in:  my friends “status updates”. If this has been bugging you as well, here is how fix this issue:

1. Go to facebook home (click the home tab on top).
2. Under the logo, on the left you will see a list of things you see on the home page
3. Under it you will see “more” link, click on that
4. Find the “Status Updates” button and drag it all the way up so that it’s the first
5. Click on it, make sure it’s highlighted ( it should be dark blue instead of light gray)
6. Done. Now you will only see status updates of your friends

It puzzles me why facebook doesn’t make it easier for us to get our home page just the way we want it. They should have a way for us to check/uncheck all the features we want to see on the home page. The more we use an application, the more control we want over what we see/don’t see. Since Facebook Now Consumes 5 Percent of Our Collective Internet Time, such control, that’s also easy to understand, is very important.