The BBC introduced social bookmarking options for all of its news website pages last month. Not a startling move in itself; as one of the editors noted in his blog, they are following the lead of some fairly large media organisations, notably the New York Times and the Washington Post. Oddly, despite me blogging about it, he neglects to mention that the New Zealand Herald implemented this back in February.
What is particularly interesting about this post, from a public sector communicators perspective, is the comments that it attracted. As we move to deploy social media tools in the .govt.nz namespace, we are likely to see the same range of reaction that is displayed in microcosm on this blog post.
There are (as of today) only 28 comments on the post and I recommend that you read them all. They provide a fascinating insight into the convergence of social media and a (much-loved) public sector web environment – hence a good indication of some of what is in store for the first agencies to use these tools or channels.
Obviously, they veer from the enthusiatic:
If find these a boon, if only because I have the one set of bookmarked articles on both home and work computers and in the case of del.icio.us on my mobile phone too.
Ged
…to the outraged:
I think this is awful! At what other time has the BBC put other sites logos anywhere on their site aside from when they feature in the story? Is this a groundbreaker? They mention the New York Times and Washington Post having the same system - er, well they are commercial sites carrying paid for advertisements. The joy of the BBC is the lack of this, and I believe thats what we are paying for through the license fee.
Stop polluting our site and get them off!
Richard Turnbull
Through the gamut of, at times, emotive reactions, there are a couple of comments that really stand out as warnings for public sector organizations (aside from the above execration about advertisements). The comment about Newsvine, in particular, is a salutary one:
We at Newsvine were very disappointed to see that a button for the site was not included. Newsvine is a very high-traffic site and, if I’m not mistaken, it sends a lot of visitors to the BBC site.
Alice
Alice has a good point. Public sector organisations have to be very careful about the companies that they (are being seen to) endorse by including them on their pages. In this case, it is simply not practical to include them all, but there are tools that allow the user to choose which bookmarking service they would like to use. The final comment points to a good example.
Where decisions do need to be made about which services to include on the page, then these should be informed by pre-existing relationships. If Newsvine is sending a lot of traffic to the BBC, then in the spirit of participation, the BBC should reciprocate: that is the point of social media.
In other words, the criteria for inclusion should be similarly based on a social media-grounded assessment. How do they fit with your shared audience? It should be a complementary relationship:
My only concern is the choice of bookmarks presented - if you visit Reddit, it’s seems primarily concerned with off-beat political news. And Digg is more concerned with niche tech stories, in my opinion.
It therefore gives the impression that the BBC selected a few social book marking sites on the basis of these sites being popular, rather than because they actually have any real connection with BBC news coverage.
Brian Turner
Conclusion
Public sector communicators should not really be surprised by the range and intensity of the reactions here. It is the environment we work in. What I found interesting about these comments is two things.
One, the extremes are balanced by some very thoughtful and helpful suggestions (this could just reflect the sort of people who read the Beeb’s editorial blogs), in any event, that is extremely encouraging.
Two, there is a lesson about how you deploy social media. It is not a case of just using the technology; you need to understand how the whole (eco)system works and that, particularly in the public sector, is not an easy task.
7 Comments
From a usability perspective I think the addition of links to add content to a bookmarking service is counterproductive - people using bookmarking sites should already have a strategy in place for saving interesting web pages to their service of choice. Ultimatly, listing a subset of services doesn’t really add anything to the user experience and, if nothing else, we need to make it easier for people to use our content. See Jakob Neilsen on back-to-top links for more on this theme.
From a social networking perspective, it shows web 2.0 is messy, people are emotional, and they dont care about engaging with you by your rules. The question here is: does the delivery make the sentiment any less valid because it differs from what you are used to?
I’m not sure what you mean in the first point of your conclusion: ‘it is the environment we work in’ - I am not aware of the public sector actually using social media to engage with the public in a meaningful way. On the whole, most egovt site’s are barely beyond the egovt version of a brochure site.
Thanks Terrence.
In reverse order: the conclusion, refers to the fact that taxpayer funded initiatives, whether online or not, inevitably polarise opinion: it is just not possible to satisfy everyone.
Does the delivery make the sentiment less valid? I think not. Surely part of the Beeb’s remit (as with most public sector entities) is to offer as many avenues for engagement for its (diverse) stakeholders as is practicable? Many of the commenters appreciate the addition of the buttons.
From a usability perspective, I don’t see it as a problem. It is (in the case of this implementation) secondary to the content and is appropriately placed within the flow of the page. Does it add to the user experience? Jakob might disagree, but he is hardly beyond reproach…
I do agree that, for most early adopters, the links are redundant. For most ordinary readers though, seeing these links often enough may eventually prompt them to actually open a del.icio.us account: and that has to be a good thing.
Point taken about the environment. Thanks for clarifying that for me.
Sure, not everyone agrees with Jakob, especially designers, but he is not alone in his view. Relevant theory governing simplicity vs multiple choice include hicks law and occams razor. Then of course there are content gurus like Gerry McGovern who essentially says the same thing from a content producers perspective.
It would be good to see a general increase in web savvy for the average person, but I would far sooner go for usable content over teaching people how to use their software and the internet in general.
When sites offer social bookmarking options, they correspondingly educate users about them i.e. help people *get* web savvy. I see this as a good thing because I like having cool useful tools and sharing cool useful links.
I don’t know much about the Share Icon Project (the site is down), but the one-icon-to-rule-them-all approach might assuage complaints around the politics of representation and page clutter?
Terrence: of course you are right about simplicity and cognitive load. I guess my take is that as long as the load is weighted properly, in this case subordinate to the content, then users can choose to engage or ignore it. But I am not a usability expert - just opinionated…
And I must disagree about Gerry McGovern: I think the correct description there is “self-described content guru.”
CJ: yes, the icon is starting to pop up all over the place and might go some way to offsetting Terrence’s (valid) concerns.
Having said all that, it’s Web 2.0 people: the page is meant to be littered with widgets, badges, javascript etc…
and don’t forget rounded corners, reflected images, CMYK inspired colour schemes, and a video only site called yougovt
I couldnt agree more.