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06/12/07 “We Heart Widgets” - Widgety Goodness
BRIGHTON, UK - I’m at Widgety Goodness in Brighton - Russell Davies gave a fantastic presentation and was discussing the Uncanny Valley and how advertising is beginning to reach the gap.
Then it hit me that Facebook Beacon dropped straight in that gap - Facebook got too human. By too human I mean too human at representing YOU, rather than being your Facebook persona that you used to control. Facebook started trying to speak your thoughts about what brands you like or buy and people got uncomfortable with it as it wasn’t human enough and got things wrong.
The issue for Facebook is now how they jump that gap - they are sitting on the tipping point again and need to get the ‘humanness’ so right that we trust it to represent us. This will always be difficult when there is advertising involved.
Maybe Facebook should have taken an intermediate step and launch Beacon for ‘personal’ sites first allowing everyone to have grown comfortable with the concept.
-Robin
Tags: brighton, event, Events, widgets, widgety goodness
4 Comments
Yeah, I get the impression Facebook was just too rushed with throwing it on people. Start subtle (especially when it comes to user data) and expand, they missed this point completely
People need to prodded slowly into the concept of their data being used.
Very good point! Like with you that uncanny valley thing keeps running through my brain about all sorts of different stuff.
Hey Will - I really enjoyed your talk too - best of the afternoon in my opinion!
I have a lot of admiration for the way you are running NixonMcInnes
-Robin.
06/01/08 Robin Blandford [ByteSurgery] » The Many Forms of Widgets… - Digital Media Engineer
[...] attending “Widgety Goodness” in Brighton, UK I’ve been preparing a technical infosheet on [...]
