A Taste of Magic: The First Apps We Show New Users
Whether it's with your family, your co-workers or your clients - many of us like to share the excitement we have about the new, social web with others. What do you show other people to demonstrate how powerful, and yet easy to use, this new world of technology really is?
We asked our staff and a number of other advanced social web users what the one thing is that they like most to show people who are less experienced with the web than they are. Some of our favorite responses are below, maybe they'll give you some fresh ideas about how to have that big conversation with the people in your life - maybe some of them will even be new for you.
We think this is more than just fun to talk about. We think those moments of sharing and discovery of the best basic new apps offer lessons to learn about contemporary human psychology.
The Big Picture
There were a number of people who said that showing people how to use browser tabs made a big difference. (This author has a hard time comprehending that, to be honest.) Communications consultant Jordan Guthman says he likes to show people Google's "advanced search" and in particular the option to limit searches to content posted within the last 24 hours. (I must admit that's a new one to me!) That probably helps illustrate that the new web is always fresh and changing.
Betsy Weber works at TechSmith, makers of screen casting programs Camtasia and Jing, tools people use to share new things about the web with each other every day. Betsy says she likes to show people Firefox Mouse Gestures. Macbook Pro owners should check out the similar multi-touch command app MultiClutch. Both of these are big time savers, helping users navigate quickly through the expansive web.
Useful: Syndication
Syndication and RSS are life changing stuff, so we weren't surprised to that many people we talked to said that some variation of RSS is the first thing they show people.
Google Alerts are very popular but they aren't the only way to introduce people to the subscribable web. (This season's newest addition to the service - RSS feeds for Google Alerts, is pretty cool though.)
Using RSS feeds helps users move beyond stumbling through a handful of websites, caught unaware of emerging information unless by chance visits to sites. It puts us in command of a personalized information flow, increased in timeliness and breadth by orders of magnitude over our old browsing habits.
PR pro Mike Maney says he starts with an RSS reader (specifically, NetNewsWire from Newsgator) because it's "amazing watching people immediately grok the power of the web coming to them." We've found too that simply showing people a filled-up RSS reader turns on light bulbs immediately. Talking about the idea, not so much.
Josh Bancroft checks out cool new things and then shows them to other people for a living, at Intel. He likes to start people out with the Common Craft video RSS in Plain English. We like that video a lot, too.
iGoogle is another popular way to show off syndication technology and it comes with the convenience and brand familiarity of Google. Netvibes, possibly the easiest "start page" to customize, is also a favorite to show new users.
SocialText's Schott Schnaars says he pointed his family to FriendFeed, where they can find all of his activity syndicated in one place. That makes a lot of sense to us, though we suspect that a separate lifestreaming account might best keep family from being overwhelmed by too much work-related information they aren't interested in.
Marshall's Pick
What do I like to show people to turn them on to syndication? I generally show them Netvibes or iGoogle but after that, I like to show them how to find feeds to fill those pages up with. There's no better way to do that than with Yahoo's social bookmarking service Delicious. Specifically, I like to show them links like http://delicious.com/tag/TopicOfInterest+blog. Check out the most popular links there and you'll find some of the best blogs on whatever your topic of interest is. We discussed this and similar strategies in a post here titled Comparing Six Ways to Find Top Blogs in Any Niche.
Show people how to find and subscribe to the top blogs on topics they are interested in and most people will be quickly engaged. It's really useful - far more useful than platitudes about "joining the conversation." Most people don't know where to look to find the conversation. Show them and they get really excited.
Next Page: Fun! Visualization and Music
Comments
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I have to agree every time I show my parents how the internet has changed, I start with Google Maps. Truly a remarkable piece of application and browser integration. RSS feeds are also a good start as it brings information directly to your local pc, so you don't have to go out and look for the information.
Posted by: Mark | December 2, 2008 6:38 PM
One I really like is to show is musicovery : http://www.musicovery.com/
It's a nice way to listen to music.
Posted by: niespika | December 2, 2008 6:48 PM
Google ,Firefox and RSS are changed the way that brought people to Internet .
Posted by: venkat | December 2, 2008 8:07 PM
another handy RSS aggregator is www.pageflakes.com
it has a nice ajax (i think) layout
Posted by: iancamarillo
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December 2, 2008 8:56 PM
I think http://popurls.com is another good entry point to get to know about what's buzzing on the web.
Posted by: Nils | December 2, 2008 10:17 PM
thanks..
Posted by: matbaa | December 3, 2008 12:40 AM
thanks..
Posted by: matbaa | December 3, 2008 1:38 AM
I show them these, and usually, they are impressed and start using them (even my mom!)
- ubiquity (this is way easier to understand for non-techical users than one might think)
- dropbox
- stumbleupon (easy to get started)
The above always leaves a great impression. And for those a bit mor techie, I show them
- bookmark and search keywords, cybersearch, etc
- greasemonkey (and install some simple scripts, like google image-search going directly to the images)
Posted by: Idaa | December 3, 2008 4:20 AM
Skype. I call it the phone from the movie 2001, and it's freaking free. Who can resist it?
Wikipedia.
I agree on Google Maps Streetview, iGoogle and Pageflakes.
Nice post!
Posted by: Leigh | December 3, 2008 10:24 AM
I think some of the fun ones that I like to show people are:
Wordle.net (makes cool pictures out of RSS enabled sites)
Animoto (music video slideshows)
Lala.com (so they can listen to their iTunes library from anywhere)
Great list though :) Sometimes it's tough to think of the good ones to show people that makes them "ooh and ahh."
Posted by: DC | December 3, 2008 10:41 AM
I'd add GigaPan to the Visualizations list.
Posted by: Ron Schott | December 3, 2008 4:05 PM
I would add blip.fm to the list of music discovery engines. And I wonder slightly why you've skipped some of the obvious ones like flickr and youtube, facebook and myspace? I guess we're assuming people know about those, or at least have seen headlines about them.
I really like it that you included a note of perspective at the end. The web 2.0 evangelist in me (and other practitioners) can get out of control and - if left unfettered - can sometimes entrench people's technophobia or lack of interest as they dismiss it as something for the geeks.
Posted by: Neil Williams | December 4, 2008 12:18 PM
I have to admit I tend to show off the fun apps more than anything... to show what it can do.
Google Earth, like streetview and Google Maps is a start
Shazam comes next as it's something I've dreamed about for years
Last.fm as it's the only one which works outside of the States
CoolIris as per the pictureshere
If I'm at home and I really want to show off then I'll use AirMouse to control my computer's mouse and keyboard and the Sonos desktop controller to control the household music system.
At this point many people generally ask: Can that thing actually make phone calls as well???
;-)
Posted by: Derek | December 8, 2008 4:10 AM