Kurt Jarchow's Blog

No not really, but Techmeme using twitter tags to get news stories makes me feel like my #CNN tag wasn’t an outrageous idea afterall.

The basic idea is when a person find discovers a news-worthy story (or is a part of a developing one) they would include #CNN in thier twitter.  This might make mining twitters for valuable stories easier.

CNN and the other news agencies should be keeping a close eye on this…

I like investigative journalism.  I like quality content.  I really like The New York Times, but… I also like that they are having a hard time right now.

Losing print media isn’t a bad thing for the NYTimes, or any other respected newspaper publisher.  Many doors will be opening as this one shuts; they just need need to find the doors.  Putting a fire under these fat giants is going to give us some really interesting results.

When the presses stop for the last time fight back the urge to crack a tear for the great institution- we’ll see the NYTimes again, and this time they’ll be leaner, seasoned, and innovative.

A monstrously redesign.  The purple monster.   The monster flop.  Ok I’m not that creative with my one-liners.  Apparently, neither is monster:

“Monster’s new job search is easier than ever! To apply for the job is 65% faster than before!”

Who is marketing this?  I’m trying to find a job not buying the Bullet blender.  Let’s take a look at this multi-multi-multi million dollar (18 million to be exact) redesign.  I’ll get through some of the interface stuff and get to the real problems.

Job Search

The new search has been simplified, and gives faceted search filtering, like SimplyHired or Indeed, so you can filter your results.

The search results are not that good however.  I searched for “Marketing coordinator” in Toronto (Canadian site) and I find perfect matches, but towards the bottom of the page.  I then dived a few pages deep and I’m still finding perfect matches mixed in with irrelevant ones; I’m even finding results from Edmonton.

My biggest problem is that every thing seems be in ajax’d.  Just because you can do it, doesn’t mean its a good idea.

Application Process

Clicking into a job I see Monster’s standard job posting page.  What has changed here?  Well, I see an ajax box, omnipresent at the bottom of my screen.  I click to find out more about the application process, but I’m met with a login screen.  I can imagine this is an executive decision to increase registered users, because most userface designers will tell you this is a goal barrier.  Not much else has changed here, let’s move on.

Profile & Resume

Clicking on the menu to access the tools, I get a fancy ajax box asking me for my login.  If I haven’t registered yet, and I want to take a look at the resume builder I wouldn’t be able too.  The site borders on arrogant with their constant demands for you to register.   I went through the painful registration process (2 steps and too many input fields), got past another 2 ajax prompts to prepare the form, and finally got to build a resume.

Note: The 2nd prompt has a funny checkbox that most people probably wouldn’t notice:

When I look at the status of my resumes they say private even if I leave this checked, so what does this do?

Here is where ajax is useful.  I feel like I’ve been overly critical thus far so I’ll say this is a half-decent implementation.  I’ve seen better though.

Career Mapping

Here is a tool that I found interesting.  I’m not entirely sure it is all that useful for me (I know what jobs I can get to move forward) but it might be interesting for some other people.  I think they must use there large data set of resumes to get common career paths.  The interface is pretty easy (even if it is flash).

What’s Really Wrong

Ok I’ve touched on some interface items but let’s look at the big picture.  Monster completely missed the boat here.  Instead of looking ahead and innovating they have made existing processes “65% faster” with excessive use of a poor ajax UI.  The social web was obviously not considered in the redesign.  How can this have been ignored?

Traffic on Monster hasn’t been going down because their interface was poor, they are losing traffic because their business model is becoming poor.  Charging a fee for posting a job is maddening to me.  There are so many ways of doing it for free!

Monster is the new AOL.

I think Monster also failed in the way this was released.  I’m a big advocate of progressive product deployment, releasing features gradually so you don’t shock your users.  This is one of the big advantages with developing for the web, and companies like Google have mastered it.

It’s really hard to see .com companies fall from their innovative beginnings.  At one point you have to look back and think “what did we do right to get here?”.

I’ve just completed my first jQuery attempt, to ajaxify the favorite_nodes “add to favorites” link.  Its actually pretty simple.

Edit favorite_nodes/favorite_nodes.module

Find the favorite_nodes_add function, and add the follow just before “return TRUE;”

 if (!empty($_POST['js'])) {
   drupal_json(array(
       ‘is_fav’ => ‘fav-link-’.$nid
    )
  );
exit;
}

Now find the favorite_nodes_link function.  Where ever the $links[] is set (4 occurrences) add attributes:

$links[] = array(’title’ => t(’add to favorites’), ‘href’ => ‘favorite_nodes/add/’. $node->nid, ‘attributes’ => array(’class’ => ‘favorite-link’, ‘id’ => ‘fav-link-’.$node->nid));

Also in that function add the following line at the start of the function to include a js file:

drupal_add_js(drupal_get_path(’module’, ‘favorite_nodes’) . ‘/favorite_nodes.js’);

Next, create the js file in the favorite_nodes dir named favorite_nodes.js and edit it:

 if (Drupal.jsEnabled) {

  $(document).ready(function () {
    $(’a.favorite-link’).click(function () {

      var favSaved = function(data) {
    $(’#'+data.is_fav).html(’Saved’);
      }

    $.ajax({
      type: ‘POST’,
      url: this.href,
      dataType: ‘json’,
      success: favSaved,
      data: ‘js=1′
    });

    return false;

  });

  });
}

This is a quick and dirty way of doing it.  I’m waiting for UI confirmation before I make the interface any better.  The best way of doing it would be instead of changing the innerHTML of the link to “Saved”, you’d change it to “remove from favorites”, and change the link accordingly.  

Passing the ID back to the jQuery got over a problem when there are multiple fav-links on one page.  I’m open to a better solution.

Also I don’t like the placement of the js include file, but I’m not entirely sure where to put it.  

 I didn’t see code for this anywhere else so this might be a good start for anyone interested.

Web 2.0 is far more than wiki’s or blogs, its a fundamental shift in social responsibility and transparency.  Its the great democratic tool, and it is wielded on our politics, social lives, and economics.  It is a wave of change in the right direction.

As a corporation it is essential to realize the benefits of collaborating with customers, understand trends, and making sure to keep with the spirit of web 2.0.  It is no longer just about features on your website, it is about a cultural change in the organization.  It is really frustrating to see resistance to change, expecially when the benefits are so important, but it is hard to blame old-styled corporations fearing economic change – this really is the hippy thought revolution of our time.  It’s Peace and Love, but also with a dash of transparency and a bucket-load of accountability.

Why is it important for corporations to let down their hair?  Because bad public feedback can trample the best marketing campaigns and markets change depending on customer habits.  

Unhappy customers can, now more than ever, be your worst nightmare.  You can’t stop critism, but you can make a negative into a positive. 

Give customers a chance to express their frustration on the internet.  This gives you 3 very important opportunities; 

1. its giving you the opportunity to win back the customer,
2. its letting everyone else know you care about customers,
3. and its enabling you to learn more about your customer.

People are fair, they know that not everyone will be happy with a corporation, but they will respect and trust a corporation which responds to their customers.  Corporate 2.0 is about building trust, and unless your corporation makes this a priority from top to bottom people will see right through you and choose a company they do trust.  

Corporate 2.0 is also about understanding what user’s want, and breaking old rules.  I’ve seen an avalance of ads from Aviva (formeraly Norwich Union) screaming a more open approach to business.  They are providing insurance quotes online which show thier rates and the rates of their competitors.  Nothing new really (and maybe released too late for a real benefit), but it is an example of a large corporation finally listening to users.  

Corporations need to be more creative and experimental.  Why are start-ups innovating the web and leaving corporations scratching their heads?  I put the blame on the fear of change and lack of open-minded leadership.  I don’t know how many times I’ve heard, in response to a unique proposal, “yeah that’s great, but that’s not our business”.

Stick with your old business for too long and you’ll find it no longer exists.