Doctor Martens social faux pa

Dr Martens have just released their all flash social networking site freedm2 to beta. The site was created by Saatchi interactive and is an attempt to engage and connect with airware customers. Unsurprisingly the agency is not going to monetise the site, but are trying to change audience brand perception and monitor that change.

I was particularly interested in this project as it's a Flash based social networking site, which made me wonder why they'd chosen that particular delivery format. I was also interested to see if Saatchi had built the site in Flash 9 utilising the new engine to create a more engaging environment.

So after waiting for the first page load I trawled the source code to discover I was in a Flash 8 environment, so let's see what this site is going to do.

The first page provided a view of a grand Victorian London residential street. Why London I wonder, why not Newcastle or Manchester or even Wales? Are DM's target audience going to aspire to this capital grandeur or we're the creative team being a little London centric in their concept? My next mission was to click on the front door, which was really exciting and a loading icon popped up for a few seconds whilst the doorbells loaded. Here I had to register, which was a boring chore. DM wanted my email and my DOB for some reason, which I obviously lied about because I want to protect my identity.

So once I'd managed to navigate the flaky login process I was standing in a dishevelled and dreary hallway looking at a grand staircase, a door and a lift. Clicking on the areas allowed me to access the different zones. Cue another loading icon.

I chose to move upstairs and was presented with a dizzying horizontal scrolling array of weird doors, most of which I couldn't access. Clicking madly to get out of this disorientating environment I end up watching another loading screen until I'm presented with another shabby room. Here I can click on a picture that is apparently a video but it won't play. At this point I notice a new Icon appear on the screen and click on it. I think this is another visitor, but I only seem to be able to contact him via email and am now stuck in this interface. Every time I do anything on this site I have to watch the loading screen crawl up to 100%

So I go back downstairs and try the lift, but it's broken, click on a notice board that’s full of dummy Lorum Ipsum text. I try my last option, which is a door that leads to a cinema. And here the lameness of this site becomes truly apparent when they try to provide a youTube experience. The graphics are really nice as you'd expect from Saatchi but the interface design is weak and the technology is woeful. I wonder if the video content was created by the Saatchi creative team after a long lunch in the pub, most of it wouldn't load and crashed after a few seconds. I notice the audience in the cinema throwing stuff at the screen, and wish I could join in.

As I was trying to leave the house to get a screenshot of the outside for this article I found the music room hidden away in the hallway. Now this space has some pretty big ideas, offering the ability to create your own music using pre-supplied sample loops on a timeline. Now this is obviously where a lot of the budget has gone, and I'm amazed by how poor the system is, it just doesn't work. Stuff won't load the interface is terrible, and the samples are as dreary and dull as the visual environment.

Saatchi claim that this site is in Beta, but I wouldn't have even shown it to the client never mind opened the doors to the public. This is not Beta, this is not social networking, it's is a pretty design that's out of touch with it's audience's aspirations with a shabby backend that makes me wonder what sort of idiot DM thinks I am to spend my valuable time on this worthless website.

My recommendation to DM is to ditch this site, create a social space that really focuses on what their brand essence is. How about a video library of underground punk gigs from the 70's, a photo library of street fashion through the ages, a tool to design your own DM shoes and boots. Brands need to reinforce their essence through content not devalue it.


Tags: Doctor Martens Saatchi Social brand AgencyFreedm2

Accessibility is law

Well in America at least you can be sued under the Americans with disabilities act if your website doesn't allow people with visual disabilities to read the content through a screen reader. The Target group was the first organisation to fall foul of this ruling.

I was at the d.construct conference in Brighton last week and Derek Featherstone gave a very interesting talk on accessibility issues in the web 2.0 world. He based his 45 minute presentation on the problems caused by the simplest form input field inputs such as login and search, which you can imagine is only the very tip of the accessibility iceberg.


Tags: Web2.0 Accessibility Target brand d.construct

RSS feeds for business

This article has a couple of interesting case studies on how organisations have used RSS Feeds to assist the flow of information internally as well as externally.

Talking shop

Tips on how to have a better conversation

David Miliband suspends Environmental Wiki

Malicious posting and deletions forces MP to suspend write privileges on his environmental Wiki project. I suspect a Wiki is not the correct platform for this ongoing conversation and they will need to look at alternative technologies to kick this off again

Change Everything

Vancity a sixty year old Canadian Credit Union have just launched ChangeEverything a social networking site that provides a forum for members to share goals and ideas relating to life changing decisions they have or are planning to make. In an effort to distribute content members are encouraged to tag their goals and place them in defined categories. The really smart (yet simple) method they use to get consistant tagging of content is achieved by autocompletion.

Vancity are being upfront about not monitising the site, and are purely using it as vehicle for getting people to think about change, and hopefully in the process they'll consider financial security. To encourage uptake and participation Vancity are offering prizes to active members.

The system is built using Drupal

The future shape of passwords

I'd much rather use the right hand side of my brain to remember security information as opposed to the tradition left hand oriented password systems. This new visually based security system uses patterns instead of letters and numbers.

Back to school

Most of my friends kids are going back to school today but according to Harris Cooper, a psychologist at the University of Missouri, children generally forget between 1 and 3 months worth of work over the summer break. Donald Clarke writes more here

Careful with that community

Social networking site Facebook is facing a revolt from a growing number of its members regarding new features they released yesterday. The upgrades that allowed members to get information concerning friends and contacts via RSS Feeds were an attempt to try to reduce the number of page impressions the site was generating. A site calling users to boycott facebook on the 12th September has been launched as well a petition to put pressure on the site's owners to remove the new features.

Community owners need demonstrate engagement with members on both technological and social development. A site owner ultimately has a responsibility to the generators of the content, who naturally feel a sense of ownership over the site. Member ownership is also experienced by subscription sites too. One subscription model site owner recounted the experience with regret as he felt he had over a thousand managers!

The irony for Facebook is, that if these new features had been included from the outset, there would probably be more uproar at the prospect of their impending removal.

The photosharing site faceoff

A good roundup comparing functionality that the main players in the photosharing space offer. Photobucket is still the market leader even though we seem to hear about Flickr more in the press, but not always for the right reasons.

BadFlickr is a blog set up by a disgruntled ex Flickr user whose account was terminated without any warning or reason. His blog focuses on the number of photos and accounts being deleted by the Flickr team and highlights the issues that grassroots companies who pioneered the web2.0 goldrush have after selling out to big corporates.

Sci Fi Channel promotes BSG3 with webisodes

SciFi channel are continuing to use the web to promote the hit TV series Battlestar Galactica by releasing a series of Webisodes that can be downloaded onto a range of devices. SFC are releasing an episode every week for the ten week run up to Series Three launching.

The webisodes have advertising before the actual feature starts.

It's worth remembering that the SFC got into online marketing by accident rather than design, releasing Battlestar Series One in the UK before the US allowing the whole series to be available on the filesharing networks before the US launch. The network thought they had blown the US launch, but the hype generated online caused the US launch to be their biggest ever show.

Everyday

Photographer Noah Kalina has been turning his camera on himself everyday for the past six years and produced this amazing film.

Amateur reviewers killing off Yellow Pages

Guy Kawasaki writes about the incredible growth of user generated reviews and posts Illana DeBare's comments on how business should respond to this new phenomenon

The science behind the creation of Wikipedia entries

Aaron Swartz has done some data-crunching using a rented supercomputer cluster to find out how Wikipedia entries get written. It turns out that there is a cluster of around 500 core editors who tidy up the majority of entries that are created by unregistered drive by posters.

This is interesting data for an organisation who run their own Wiki, as the number of core editors compared to the number of posters is very small.