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Mark Trapp. Blog.

Mark is an expert in information clarity and simplicity: he has a broad range of experience in usability, technology management, information architecture, and interactive strategy. This is his blog.

On Apple, FriendFeed, and TechmemeJanuary 5

Bottom Line: When discussion about a subject that you're passionate about, it's important to take a step back and figure out if you're providing a reasonable argument about it.

Although the title should make for some excellent Google bait, there were a couple topics today that seem to fit into what I've been discussing for the past couple of days. This morning, there was a lot of discussion on FriendFeed started Robert Scoble about Gabe Rivera's comments on FriendFeed founder Paul Buchheit's post on FriendFeed (hope you're still with me). From the post, Rivera said:

Nobody should count out FF. The obvious technical excellence of the team and the very impressive pace of innovation you guys have already demonstrated make that clear. But I think people are alarmed that so many people have tried the site and then abandoned it (or at least that's how it appears). I personally think the way commenting and liking works has created i

Armchair EntrepeneuringJanuary 3

Bottom Line: We need to change how we approach early adopter feedback: stop thinking about "they clearly messed up, those idiots" and start thinking about "why did they do it this way?"

This weekend, Louis Gray offered up his suggestions on what FriendFeed must do in order to continue to grow. It included imperatives on for FriendFeed in a variety of areas: from the need to appeal to the mainstream, to its need to better define its value. Several other bloggers and big names in tech jumped on this, laying charges from FriendFeed's lack of big fish awareness to FriendFeed's apparent lack of a business model.

This is all part of a phenomenon that occurs in the blogosphere on an almost daily basis, and something I call armchair entrepeneuring. Offering feedback is one thing: but the sheer hubris of tech bloggers that they know how to run a company better than the ones actually running it is entirely different. It's never merely "I've used this product, and this is what's good about it, and this is what stinks about it;" it

Argumentation: it's not just for trollsSeptember 27 2008

Bottom Line: Separating the argument from the arguing and the people doing the arguing lets us talk about topics in a broader depth and get things done.

Earlier this week, I mentioned I'd be organizing what I write into different serializations, or "tracks:" today I'm going to introduce a track on argumentation. I'll be discussing how to use argumentation to not only your advantage: not necessarily to win arguments, but to find out what the best possible answer is to a problem.

What is an argument?

Most people consider an argument to be two people shouting at each other, getting angrier and angrier as time progresses. I'm going to talk about a different kind of argument: one that I hope would be more palatable to more people.

An argument is a position and a justification for that position. I think scones are the best baked good. I believe this to be true because they're dry but not too dry, you can stick various delicious things in them, and they go well with a hot beverage. That's is an argument. You may have a comp

Friendship in the digital world (Part 2)September 23 2008

Bottom Line: Friendship differs from other relationships in one key respect: friends aren't in it for personal gain, but to achieve something that makes each other better.

 

Note: this series of posts is adapted from a larger paper on the nature of Friendship I wrote in 2005. Part 1 discusses the problems with Friendship in digital media. Check back later in the week for the subsequent parts.

Yesterday I mentioned three basic intuitions most people have about what Friendship is:

• Friends share interests
• Friends share interest in each other
• Friendship is stable

Today, I want to start off by talking about some basic intuitions about what Friendship isn't: that is, while keeping our basic understand of Friendship in mind, what circumstances would we consider definitely not a case of Friendship?

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What Friendship Isn't – Example 1: Co-workers

In the real world, take a look at two co-workers in the office. They both share interests: each one is ostensively interested in the company and its workings (motivations for doing so aside). They both share an interest in each other: co-workers help each other out on projects all the time. And, for most people, t

Friendship in the digital world (Part 1)September 22 2008

Bottom Line: Friendship is a complex concept that few web applications define, leaving the users to make sense of what their relationships are in the digital world.

Note: this series of posts is adapted from a larger paper on the nature of Friendship I wrote in 2005. Check back later in the week for the subsequent parts.

One of the fundamental concepts in social media is the idea of Friendship: in order to participate in any social network or to utilize any of the social media tools, one needs to have friends. From a purely technical perspective, a friend is simply a connection on an individual's social graph: a similar entity that has been defined as "connected" to the individual.

But that simple connection isn't defined, in any normative sense, by the technical implementation. Users are free to define that connection however they wish. For example, if I wish to define all my friends in a social network to be everyone named "Jeff," there'd be nothing to stop me from doing so. I could go to my friends page and marvel at all the people named "Jeff."

But that's not really what we consider friendship, and one would be hard pressed to find anyone who'd find some substantive use from a social graph like that. So what could we consider real Friendship?

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Friendship: rel