Fast Company’s redesign gave me a headache
Fast Company redesigned their site, adding social features. I must admit that when I first heard about the redesign I wondered if this was another example of a traditional company trying to hop on board with the latest thing (social features). I decided to check it out.
When I first visited the site my eyes bounced around the page following all the orange links and images. As you can see from the screenshot there is a large sign up box at the top of the page. This screams to me that they really want people to sign up since the box is taking up quite a bit of prime real estate on their front page. Very soon I understood why and it is the reason why I decided to write the article. Once you sign up the sign up area turns into this:
After signing up, things started to make sense. As you can see from the screenshot there are variety of options for the user. Groups, Contacts, Multimedia, Bookmarks, Feeds, Newsletters, Blog, Events, Networks, Recommendations. When you sign up they ask for your title, making it very clear this is for business purposes. It even says so on the front page before you sign up. So I ask you…
Why would I put images, video, audio and documents on their social site? Don’t people go there for information? Why would I create a network there, put my events there, and heaven help me, why would I blog there? And they have a widget for their blogs…so I can place their blog entries on my own site? I looked around their groups. One of their featured groups, Technology, was created on in January, has 109 members…and 10 comments of which I could only view 2 for some reason. Fast Company is not Facebook.
Recommendations and Bookmarks are great ideas. They focus on the content, which should be their focus. Their niche person is the business person, who probably has social network accounts elsewhere. There isn’t a reason to join this network and do what the person is already doing elsewhere.
Then they do the thing I detest the most. When you subscribe to a feed it automatically adds it to their internal feed reader. I was unable to subscribe to the feeds I tested in FeedDemon, Google Reader or Bloglines. There are some pages that have RSS buttons right next to a Subscribe button. One link works in a browser; one requires a login (going into their internal feed reader). Excuse me but both options are subscribe methods, correct? When you subscribe to an entry, the user is shown a message that the RSS feed has been placed in their feed reader. I promise you it didn’t go in my feed reader (FeedDemon). I looked in My Feeds and guess what I found:
How did SPAM get in my feed reader? My Feeds has 683 things I didn’t subscribe to! And guess what? I don’t see a way to delete all 683 of these items I didn’t ask for. I can mark them read but I cannot delete them…that I can see.
And please don’t get me started on the half descriptions for articles on their front page. If you look at the image above you will see they use a cut-off method instead of a more professional summary method like ArsTechnica or cNet. You know so the reader has an idea what the article is about.
Miserable effort Fast Company. Miserable. I hope you put more thought into your video network. What do I know? I’m not the designer of The Triad. Maybe people enjoy being forced to read feeds on a site instead of their feed reader and, when they go to read the feed, are bombarded with 683 spam (new member, remember that) rendering it almost impossible to find the article I subscribed to. Yeah…what do I know?
Mike Rundle # —
Wow I am not a fan of this new design at all. Looks almost as bad as the USAToday redesign or the Boxes and Arrows redesign.
Ed Sussman # —
Hi Tyme, Sorry about the bugs. It’s our first week out. Kind of unfair to compare us to Facebook, four years old with 200 developers. That said, we already have 96,000 members in our decade-old community, Company of Friends. Their are more than 200 chapters of the CoF worldwide and many of them meet monthly. Avid fans of Fast Company, as these 96,000 are, have been asking for these changes for years — being able to blog for the site, more extensive profiles, better calenders for their groups.
We serve our existing community first and foremost — people who want to engage with our journalists and each other about what we write. I believe that every media site will add tools such as these over the coming three years. It looks a bit unusual to you because we are among the first mainstream brands to do so.
Speaking of blogs — the main reason you might want to blog for FastCompany.com is because there’s a built in audience of about one million visitors a month who are interested in business, innovation and yes, design as used in business. Your blog would be featured in many places on the site, from your member profile, to topic pages about your subject, to our blog directory. Select member blogs are featured on our homepage as well.
And because Fast Company is a large site with tens of thousands of link backs in place, your blog will also likely index much higher in Google than if you blog using a non-descript blog tool. So there is great power in linking up with an estabnlished brand. About 300 people have set up blogs so far.
In the coming weeks, we will iron out all the various bugs you refer to and get a handle on the idiots who use our site to spam drug names. I hope you’ll visit again, and participate in our design community, ask questions of your fellow members and our journalists.
We are a focused community of interest centered around our subject matter and journalism. We have no desire to compete with mass social networks. I’d rather our members find two or three other business professionals to carry on good discussions with, then add 800 friends to their buddy list so they can throw sheep at them.
cheers,
Ed
Tyme White # —
Thank you Ed for responding.
Perhaps I have a higher expectation because Fast Company has been around for so long and, in my opinion, has the reputation for quality.
When I logged in, I did not see much activity and perhaps that was because I was logging in as a new user. I know from experience that one can have a million plus users but that does not mean exposure for those writing on the blogs. The blogs are somewhat hidden so unless those one million people signed up, browsed Fast Company and those specific blogs, isn’t there a disconnect?
I hope the bugs are fixed quickly and you have much success with your new platform. I will check back in a couple of weeks and take it for another spin.
Thanks again for responding. I appreciate it.
Naveed # —
Man, fast company put out a fast response.
Quality business connections are tough to come by so I kinda like the quality factor he’s gunning for.
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