The Bee Hive

I’m not even going to pretend for a second that I don’t think this is super-cool:

“We found that the page with highest rate of entering and then exiting quickly was our homepage,” says Kate O’Neill, director of customer experience and product development, Magazines.com. “And it was happening at such an alarming rate. We needed to find a way to engage people, so we started experimenting.”
[…]
Magazines.com will continue to test to see how they can personalize and cater to these segments in the future. “In the coming months, we will take yet a closer look at segmentation. We want to be able to give our customers different channels to explore and offer them what they might be looking for in real time. It’s all about customizing the user experience,” says O’Neill.

And I’ve been asked to speak at the Circulation Management conference in Chicago in June.

No lie, this is fun stuff.

Share This

Oddly enough, a Google news alert for “kate o’neill” brought me to this topic in the bisexual community over at LiveJournal. Turns out no one was talking about me — the “kate” came from “Kate Winslet” and the “o’neill” from “Chris O’Neill” — but in a way, they kind of were, in a strange coincidence.

The discussion was around the list of movies in the Bisexual category at Netflix, and whether the titles constituted a good set, or were just stereotypes. Some commenters had already made the case that they were, for the most part, a good set, which I appreciated… since I’m the one who put the list together.

I left the following comment:

I’m the person who initially put together the list of bisexual movies for Netflix. I was the content manager there in 2000-2001, and I created the Bisexual subgenre within the content database, gradually populating it over time with titles that I (as a bisexual person) recognized as pertaining in some way to bisexuality, because they either feature an openly bi character, have some fluidity of sexuality within the story, are mentioned in Wayne Bryant’s wonderful book “Bisexual Characters in Film,” or seemed relevant in some other way.

I certainly understand if they seem random; I thought it would be preferable to have a broader category than one that missed the breadth of representation of bisexuality, for better or worse.

The internet is such a small world.

Share This

All of a sudden, I’m finding myself with several public speaking (or teaching) opportunities. Next week, my former boss, who is now teaching an e-commerce class at Vanderbilt, wants me to step in and teach two of his classes while he’s out of town. So after next week, I can add to my resume “taught classes at Vanderbilt.” Weird.

And based on some work I’ve been doing at Magazines.com, I’m going to be presenting at a subscription marketing summit in New York in May, and there’s a possibility I’ll be making a very similar presentation at a vendor conference in Salt Lake City in March.

I’m pretty happy about it — I do like public speaking and teaching. It’s just funny how I’ve gone quite a while not doing any of it, and now I’ll be doing (relatively) a lot of it in the next few months.

Share This

Clearly, Microsoft looking to acquire Yahoo! suggests a direct run at Google. And I’ve heard rumblings from people over the years about various Yahoo! products being superior to their Google counterparts: Y! mail, for instance, lead Gmail in innovations for quite some time before Gmail started catching up again late last year. And I’ve heard only good things about Yahoo!’s User Interface Library, though I personally haven’t spent a lot of time investigating it.

But MS and Yahoo! both have struggled to capture the public’s imagination nearly as much as Google continually does. It looks like a long shot to me. But if I were making the decisions at MS, I would absolutely do it. If nothing else, Yahoo! is a far less hated brand than almost anything Microsoft owns. Heck, that’s got to be worth millions all by itself.

Share This

We got talking about Twitter etiquette at the Geek Breakfast, and I decided I was going to do a post about the emerging dynamics of being polite while micro-blogging.

Jackson seemed to think that was pretty ironic, though, since I’m apparently violating the #1 rule of Twitter etiquette: don’t post daily recaps of your Twitter updates in your blog. Or at least don’t make it the only content you post for a week or more.

In my defense, I said, I’ve been modifying my Twitter updates since I started doing that so that they’d be somewhat more substantive. That got a mumble of support, but the message was clear: daily Twitter summary posts do not make up for real blog content.

OK, so there’s rule number one, and I’m public enemy number one, and now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s move on to number two, shall we?

The ability to track topics is one of Twitter’s most useful features. I track several keywords, and when I find myself reading updates from the same people multiple times, I decide that they must be worth following. I don’t just start following them, though — I send them a direct message letting them know I saw their posts about magazines, say, or songwriting, and am now following them. So far no one has acted like I’m stalking them, and most of the people I contact that way end up following me back.

So rule #2 is: before you follow someone you don’t know, send a message and let him or her know why you’re following them. If nothing else, this will let the other person know what content is most interesting to other people, and that’s always handy to know.

Alright, so there are the first two rules: one of which I’m bad about, and one of which I’m good about. What would you add to the list?

Share This

I have a magnet on my desk with the message “always make new mistakes.” When I saw it at Wild Oats I bought it because, at the time, I was involved in several projects at work that felt like instant replays of projects from my distant and not-too-distant past.

But even now — and in fact, every day — it comes in handy as a reminder that making mistakes can be extremely valuable, just as long as you learn from them.

Last year, I managed the redesign of our web site’s checkout function to allow new customers to pass through without having to register. When we finally launched it to 100% of our audience, it had a glitch that prevented many users from being able to check out at all. In one day, that error cost the company about $17,000.

Luckily, we resolved the issue and re-launched, and the checkout process has been successful, certainly earning back many times what it cost that day. (The CFO jokingly asked me that day if he should just take the $17K out of my paycheck, and I said sure, as long as I get to keep what I bring in, too.)

Today I realized that even while redesigning the checkout, I completely overlooked a similar process on the site that is totally inconsistent with the way we handle checkout and very probably confusing as hell for our users. I mean, of course there are loads of things wrong with our site — we’re working on a complete overhaul, but it will be a gradual process — but the two processes in question are areas that I personally touched last year and attempted to optimize, apparently blind to how unnecessarily different they are.

It’s always tempting to beat myself up at a realization like that, and think what a terrible job I’ve done. But I haven’t done a terrible job — I’ve incrementally improved two important areas of the site, and now the right thing to do is to make them work well together.

I have another desk-top adage in the form of a cardboard sign with an image of Snoopy and, in German (I found it in Germany 15 years ago), “As long as you learn new tricks, no one can call you an old dog.”

Woof.

Share This

I thought about writing a year-end update yesterday, but the truth is, not all that much of note happened. And that’s a pretty good thing, as it turns out, because I was also thinking yesterday about how I’m feeling more balanced and centered than I have in — gosh, what? — maybe 8 or 9 years.

In the meantime, the highlights were clear:

• Karsten and I celebrated our 10th anniversary of being together and being crazy in love by going to Paris, world capital of romance. And it was romantic. The trip wasn’t 100% perfect all the time, but it was wonderful on balance. As for being together 10 years: wow. Our ties to each other just keep getting stronger, and having that is the best thing life can offer in any year.
• I started working at Magazines.com in January of 2007, and it’s been a really good move for me. I worked a lot (so much so that I seem to have lost my ability to update blogs), but I’m really OK with it. In fact, by far most of my efforts and energy in ‘07 were directed towards helping make something really special happen there. And it looks like that will be the case in 2008, too, and again, I’m OK with that. (Although if that’s still the case in 2009, I will have to re-evaluate my effectiveness. I want to be able to find better balance around then.)
• We got the front porch, doorway, and fence built, and the front of the house is transformed. I find so much pleasure in those last few yards of my drive home, coming up over the top of the hill in front of us, looking at such a charming house and being perfectly content to live there. I’ve never had that feeling about a place where I’ve lived before, and I don’t take it for granted that I’m this lucky. (And who knows — we might even be able to begin the major addition and renovation in 2008.)
• Karsten and I got close to another song placement, and although it didn’t ultimately come together, we ended up having much-needed clarifying conversations about our level of commitment to our songwriting (both still very committed) and how to refine our writing process under our current highly-unavailable circumstances (maybe more on that later). That clarity should help us over this next year, too, as we both continue to be heavily distracted by other areas of work (me with my job, him with renovation and visual art) — we should still be able to make progress, as long as we continue to want to. And so far, we still want to.

There were other events, of course: stressful conflicts at work, pests in and around the house, disappointments, disagreements, and so on. But they don’t stand out in hindsight, and that tells me exactly what my resolution for 2008 needs to be:

I resolve to find as much happiness in the current space of every moment as I possibly can, remembering that, in the end, it’s the happy moments I’ll want to carry with me.

May 2008 be the happiest of new years for all of you, as well.

Share This

What 2008 looks like on 12/28, draft 1

Originally uploaded by Kate O’

It’s only a very rough draft with very few dates and dependencies filled in. But hey, it’s a draft, and that’s SOMEthing. I’ll fill in the rest when I get back in the new year.

And with that, I’m out of here and ready to usher in the next big year for all of us.

Share This

• dreaming big today. what will the magazines.com site experience be like in 2008 and beyond? that is the question. #

Share This

I’m so amused by the numbers of top searches in Google today that have to do with preparing a turkey. People, if you’re just now starting to wonder about how to cook it, it’s probably a good idea just to join me and Karsten at Baja Fresh.

Share This

• non-matching test results make my brain hurt. is a or b the better option? how will i ever know? gah! #

Share This

I’m so lame. I never got around to posting on Blog Action Day. But my excuse is that I’ve had a real roller coaster of a week. I went from, well, managing myself on Monday to having two direct reports on Wednesday, and that’s only part of it. So yeah, I really do think activism is important, I just didn’t take the arbitrarily designated day to talk about it. I wish I could link to my activism category, but I’ve been slow with this whole content import and re-tagging thing, so I’ve only gotten around to tagging one of my old posts with it. Oh well. There’s always next year.

***

On Thursday evening, Karsten and I went to hear Peter Plagens give an art lecture at the Frist with our friends Brad and Jed, and I’m pretty sure we were all creatively inspired. It was awesome. He basically talked about the struggle to embrace the new once you’ve become comfortable and familiar with the not-so-new, but unlike that rather trite-sounding summary, he was articulate and witty and insightful.

***

Speaking of embracing the new, I spent this morning working on updating the top-level honeybowtie.com site. I needed to replace a lot of the clunky tables, image-based text styling, and Dreamweaver-generated Javascript from oh-so-long-ago with a more adaptable CSS-based design. I’m not in love with how it looks yet, but it’s definitely a step in the direction I’m trying to go. The idea is to incorporate the blog and the rest of the site a bit more seamlessly, but I’m obviously not there yet.

***

Karsten is spending the day working (and I’m occasionally collaborating with him) on a project we’ve been trying to get around to finishing for several months now. Between all the chaos of the house renovation, my day job, our flea and rat troubles, sick cats, and vacation, it’s been delayed a bit. So with any luck we’ll have a scratch demo recorded by tomorrow night, even if it’s only a chorus. The artist we’re communicating with about this song has been waiting long enough and we need to get this one wrapped. I’m also trying to round up some other song ideas she might be interested in, so I guess we have next weekend already planned, too.

***

This vodka and tonic is simply perfect. I am a bartending genius, I tell you.

Share This

I’m kind of annoyed about the news that Home Depot is opening new stores aimed at women, but not nearly as annoyed as I am that they’re calling them “Her Depot.” I mean, seriously, wtf?

I worked at Home Depot some 12 years ago. I was a head cashier and worked at the special services desk, which was where large accounts and projects were tracked and managed. It was a pretty cool gig, mostly, despite the fact that I was only working there because I was making so little money as the head of the Language Laboratory at UIC. (Seriously, I was making, like $19K in a role that could be described as “head of a department at a fairly large state university”. It was ridiculous.) Even as draining as it was working a nearly full-time job on top of another full-time job, I enjoyed most of my time in the orange apron.

Also, if I may remind you, I own a house with my handyman husband, and said house has needed detailed attention from what amounts to nearly every aisle of the hardware store.

I mention those two things to let you know that I’ve spent more than my fair share of time within Home Depot stores.

And in all those hours upon hours of walking over hard concrete warehouse floors, I really haven’t noticed Home Depot having a problem pulling in female customers. They’re all over the store, though clearly there is a heavier concentration of women in the lighting, appliance, and garden areas. But even so, they’re there. And they’re buying.

So I’m just not seeing where there was this great need to spin off a store just for her. Which again reminds me of my other point: “Her Depot”? For serious? What kind of condescending shit is that?

I mean, not only is it condescending but it’s also short-sighted. It sounds like they’re looking to compete with the retail powerhouse that is Target, but they’re idiots if they 1) think men don’t shop at Target a lot; and/or 2) think men are going to be very eager to shop at “Her Depot.” Except maybe in gay irony or when coerced by the wife.

It’s just such bad decision-making all the way around. Kind of makes me want to go buy screws and power tools at Target, just out of spite.

HT: Consumerist

Share This

Yesterday I was offered the option of installing Entourage on my Mac to better sync with my work stuff, but I’ve heard such negative things about it from Mac purists that I immediately turned it down. But I’m wondering if I was too hasty. Do any of you use Entourage? Do you like it? Hate it? Pros and cons would be lovely.

Share This

Someone hit my site from Google looking for “nicknames for Karsten.” Man, I wish I could tell you. Aside from “The Hammer,” which is really specific to my Karsten, I don’t really have anything for you. Karsty? He’d sneer at me for that one. Sten? I think he’d just look at me like I was crazy if I tried it.

Yeah, sorry, I got nothing.

Share This

I just had to renew Honey Bowtie’s subscription to Billboard and I did it, of course, on Magazines.com. But that’s a $299 order (side note: yes, Billboard is a ridiculously expensive magazine, but it’s such a great way to follow a broad cross-section of the industry), and because I’m running several tests on the site that I don’t want to skew with such a huge order, I had to very carefully step around all the spots on the site that would have tracked me and added my purchase to test results.

I am such a geek.

Share This

Communications Audit

Originally uploaded by brittney

Brittney (a.k.a. She Who Is Soon To Be Leaving Us For The City By The Bay) took this picture of the awesome handiwork of one of our colleagues who didn’t happen to have Visio handy, so she made do with Post-It notes. I’m pretty sure she has Visio now, but this is way more fun.

All of this effort is in the name of streamlining processes to improve the customer experience. As, ya know, the person who’s supposed to be managing said customer experience, I heartily approve.

Share This

I’ve noticed several tweets from my followees (I know that’s not really what they’re called — but then again what is Twitter vernacular for “the people you’re following?”) in the last 24 hours about Twitter’s “redesign” so I’ve poked around to draw some conclusion about it myself. From what I can see, there’s not a whole lot to talk about, but what they’ve done makes me wonder what’s coming next.

I can’t help but wonder if Twitter as a company and its users have significantly different visions of what Twitter as a tool is.

When I first noticed the redesign yesterday, I could have sworn they’d removed the Older link at the bottom of the “Recent” tab. Maybe they put it back because of the public outcry. I do think the tweet archive is important on the web — reviewing tweet history is probably the main reason I ever visit twitter.com — so I’m glad they conceded the point.

I think putting the overall notifications preferences in the sidebar was a good call, but I think it points to a remaining ease-of-use possibility around preferences for individual Twitterers. Flickr has it right with their hover options that let you click to change your contact preferences, and LiveJournal recently got it even more right: you can hover over a LiveJournal member and change your preferences right from the hover menu.

Twitter’s come a long way, but there’s still a sense that they’re lagging behind demand and underperforming based on user expectations. Still, I enjoy the tool and admit to being eager to see what they’re building up to with this redesign. Because they need to be up to something. Maybe they’re feeling safe now because they’ve pulled so far ahead of the other tools in being identified with the concept of micro updates, but there’s no safety for long in web technologies, and they’ll have to keep innovating or they’ll be but a tweet in history.

Share This

Ivy seems to think so and I’m starting to believe her.

My Amazon redesign post took me all of two minutes to write, yet is getting read by folks from various corners of the globe. That’s nice and all, but an awful lot of those links lead to my LiveJournal account instead of honeybowtie.com. Bummer! I could have used that link love to build my search presence.

Also, of the folks that did end up on honeybowtie.com, Site Meter tells me a few have been from Amazon. Nice. Had I known the good folks in Seattle would actually read my feedback, I probably would have been a little more thorough about giving it. Ah well.

Lesson learned for the future: when writing about something that someone is probably emotionally invested in (and projects that people have presumably been working hard on for some time would, yes, fall into that category), remember that people do ego searches and write knowing you’ll be read.

Share This

Cory & the pup in my cubicle

Originally uploaded by Kate O’
Coworker Cory with coworker MaryAnne’s puppy. This dog is so freakin’ cute. She yawned and out came the tiniest little squeak I’ve ever heard.
More days like this, please!

Share This

I got a message on Flickr a while ago about a picture I took of the Tennessee State Capitol building — that the online guide Schmap may want to use it and would I indicate my approval or not. So I said that’d be fine with me. On Saturday I got confirmation that the picture was indeed included and was now live on the site. From the message on Flickr:

I am delighted to let you know that your submitted photo has been selected for inclusion in the newly released third edition of our Schmap Nashville Guide: Tennessee State Capitol Building
www.schmap.com/nashville/sights_downtown/p=18858/i=18858_3.jpg

I do like the sunset colors on the capitol, but I don’t even think it’s a very good photo — it’s only a crappy Treo-quality picture, after all. But I did take the stupid picture, despite what the photo credit shows:

Guess I probably should sort that out. I bet Chris Wage would never let crap like that slip.

Share This

My boss and my coworker stumbled across an Amazon redesign today. Not wanting to be left out, I kept deleting cookies and reloading until I got into their test.

You can read about the changes here.

So far, I think it’s pretty slick. They have an amazing complex information architecture and they managed to simplify it about as well as I can imagine doing. The horizontal features scale up and down pretty well. My only complaint is with the drop-down navigation that relies on hovering over an arrow instead of hovering over the whole nav item — it’s unnecessarily taxing to mouse over such a small target.

Otherwise, I really, really like it. I hope they get the feedback they need quickly so they can roll this out. Nice work, Amazon!

Share This

I just had a lovely lunch with two former co-workers. (Sorta. I worked there for such a short period of time that we barely count as co-workers.) And it got me to thinking.

I think maybe Digital Dog is to the Nashville web industry what Kevin Bacon is to Hollywood.

The analogy only goes so far, because I’ve never heard that Kevin Bacon drives the people that work with him crazy. But just as when you play a “six degrees” game, you can always join movie people through Kevin Bacon, I doubt there’s a web professional in Nashville who’s more than a few degrees away from Digital Dog.

In fact, I think it should be a drinking game. Who’s in?

Share This

Share This

This is a really cool demonstration of a technique for image resizing that respects what is designated as the main focus area or areas of an image. Some of the illustrations get a little freaky, in the sense that this is just not how we’re used to thinking about visual scale. But it’s clear that there could be incredibly useful applications of this approach in any kind of content delivery — especially those that are platform-agnostic, like news and media web sites, as well as e-commerce.

Anyway, check it out.

Share This