hidef

When I heard the news from about Facebook spreading its presence more evenly across websites through things like social plugins and Instant Personalization, I couldn't help but stack the news up against other offerings that have sought to socialize and personalize the web browsing experience: RocketOn, Yoowalk, and Flock.

Why am I comparing Open Graph to a virtual-world-on-top-of-browsing (RocketOn), websites-as-virtual-buildings (Yoowalk), and Browser-as-socialmedia-aggregator (Flock)?

I'm comparing them to Open Graph because I believe Open Graph provides the user experience these great projects were seeking, but better.

Let's make a quick comparison and understand what the best way of engaging folks for your cause is and why.

RocketOn

RocketOn Avatar

RocketOn and Yoowalk share a common goal: to overlay spacial context and socialization onto the web surfing experience. Let's say you have the RocketOn plug-in installed on your browser and are checking out a video on YouTube. If I also have the plug-in installed and land on that same video, I will see your avatar walking across the page like a cockroach on linoleum.

Yoowalk

Yoowalk Virtual City Street

Yoowalk takes a slightly different approach by creating a centralized city that provides more organization around the spatial context. Websites themselves are represented as little shops on virtual streets, so that not only can you meet someone who is browsing YouTube from within the world, but your experience is more immersive and tailored to how sites relate to one another in the context, moreso than RocketOn.

Flock

Flock Social Widgets

Flock doesn't try to stack a spacial context on top of the web. Instead, it is a browser similar to Internet Explorer or Firefox that has built-in widgets that make it easier to tap into your social networks, emails, videos, and photos. It basically makes use of all the API's out there to pull down content from, say, your Facebook account and present it to you in a way that integrates it with your browsing experience.

What about Facebook's Open Graph?

Facebook's Social Graph on CNN

In the context of "overlaying something onto your browsing experience to make it more social," Facebook's approach is basically to say, "We don't need a 3D visualization of the web; we don't need avatars on top of web pages, and we don't need a special browser with widgets. We want to enable each website to be more social while still having control over the user experience."

Let CNN.com be CNN.com, integrating my social graph to the extent it will add value to my user experience.

And I think this approach is the right approach.

Don't get me wrong: Yoowalk, RocketOn, and Flock are three really cool approaches to making the Internet more meaningful, intimate, and personalized. The novelty, however, turns quickly into learning curve, which turns into a poor user experience and a distraction from the user experience each website has created.

The Final Word

This conversation, I feel, is the very reason that Facebook and social networking took off when everyone was talking about the emergence of virtual worlds like Second Life. The latter didn't take off because, fundamentally, the visual layer actually ends up distracting from content and relationships, creating a sub-par user experience for day-to-day users compared to the ease of the Facebook interface.

I still believe virtualization will be a powerful mechanism for visual presentation of content--someday. For now, we at HiDef are focused on building for the browsing experience users are used to rather than building new browsing experiences to which users must adapt.

Contact us if you need help navigating the implications of Open Graph and what it means for your ability to engage people in new, important ways.