“Decisions that feel too small to matter” talks about sites which choose to sound like a friend. One example: how sites display time lapsed. “You don’t measure time — you feel it. This engineer understood that you’re a human being. He decided that communicating elapsed time should sound like telling you the time over coffee, ‘When did Michael update his status?’ It’s small. You probably didn’t even see it. It’s not precise, but tells you exactly what you need to know. Moreover, it sounds like someone rather than something is saying it. It sounds authentic.” [via KS]
Seen by Matt Linderman on December 29 2008. There are 6 comments.
Joe 29 Dec 08
Why is the page title facebook-auth-d9ce6931e3ad490705715395a29d18ea.jpg?
Duarte 29 Dec 08
In the opposite way, google’s “Results 1 – 10 of about 920,000,000 for water [definition]. (0.09 seconds)” reinforces that you’re dealine with a machine (a powerful, fast one).
And maybe that’s exactly the way you need to feel when you use google!
GeeIWonder 29 Dec 08
I like how Rands’ post opens with the Almost Famous movie, but, somewhat conveniently, ignores the punch line, which basically mocks his point.
Also, there’s something pretty creepy about a person who needs to see ‘loves you’ on a web logo enough to make two consecutive posts about it.
If that’s ‘authentic’ sounding, I’ll pass, thanks.
John Douthat 29 Dec 08
@Duarte – yes, I’d say that “Results 1 to almost a dozen of a whole whole bunch of results for water [definition]. (a moment)” leaves something to be desired :)
Brade 30 Dec 08
I actually hate this new fad of fuzzy times. Just give me the actual freaking time of the post. I’m not a moron. I can do the math…
Henrik N 31 Dec 08
I think relative time is great (as long as I can also get at the absolute time, with time zone), but “a moment ago” seems way too vague for this domain.
This discussion is closed.