Upstream: On the Google+ "Makeover"

The #newgoogleplus is a pain, to say it nicely.  I love Google Plus, but I'm honestly appalled.  So now I have to explain why, I guess.  However, I am somewhat hopeful this post will become out of date as soon as I post it, when Google gets negative feedback and responds.  But I've become less optimistic than I was initially.  Much of the feedback so far has been positive, both in the press, and judging by the #newgoogleplus hashtag.  However, the user reactions tagged with #newgoogleplus were not all positive; in fact, there was quite a lot of discussion of #whitespace, a reference to the new interface's perceived too-much-white-space, especially (allegedly) on big screens.  This doesn't seem surprising to me, as looking at the new Google Plus, I suspect the team is trying to take a cue from mobile design, and mobile device screens are small.  I'm not sure that the #whitespace complaints, however negative, are really the kind of negative feedback I want people to be submitting to the Google Plus team.  Though I do think it is an issue, for me, the #whitespace issue is only one problem.  I fear that more detailed or better feedback will get lost behind feedback that makes for a good meme (#whitespace begot #usesforwhitespace and many ideas followed, my favorites being Occupy White Space and this one).  That being said, what follows is my attempt at "better feedback."  Please realize that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and although I believe that some beholders have better eyes, try not to get mad at me if you feel strongly one way or another.  Also, please be aware that the Google Plus changes include more than just visual changes (and some of the #newgoogleplus feedback did address this, namely Twitter & Facebook had a baby).

There's a story behind my loathsome reaction to the new Google Plus.  It has to do with me, and thus my reaction has to do with me, but not all of my reaction is about me personally.  I figure I'll start with the me part though:

Upstream

This is my old Google Plus home; since I am unable to provide a screenshot, I give you an artist's rendition; the artist is me, so I do apologize about the lack of discernable skill:



On the top is the Google navigation bar:  the black one on the top, not the Google Plus bar directly below it.  Anyway, it's ugly, but it shouldn't go away, or get prettier.  It draws attention to Google's many products, and should appear in every Google product so as to attract attention to Google as a whole.  Everything below that bar is beautiful.  Beautiful is a real buzzword these days, but it sounds cheesy to me, so from now on I'm going to use the phrase "really good looking." Everything below the navigation bar is really good looking.

Below the Google Plus logo and below the picture of me (that stick figure is me), are my streams.  There's a main stream, and then there are streams for each one of my circles.  It's not necessarily self-explanatory that by clicking "Stream" you are viewing the main stream, but the main stream is where you are taken to when you arrive at Google Plus, so this isn't an urgent issue.  I think users understand that there is a main stream.

My circles require some explanation:  my "Shortwave" circle is like a "Close Friends" circle, and my "Longwave" circle is like an "Acquaintances" circle.  It's basically just code:  a shortwave has a higher frequency than a longwave, so those who I want to hear from more frequently I put in the "Shortwave" circle.  It's more accurate:  Danny Sullivan, of Search Engine Land and Marketing Land, is in my "Shortwave" circle, though I do not know him personally.  My "Google" circle is for all the Google Plus pages of the various teams within Google.  My "Celebs" circle is for celebrities.  I think it has two people in it right now and they're Hank Green and John Green of the Vlogbrothers.  (I'm so cool.) The other two circles, "Following" and "News," are pretty self-explanatory.

I have it set so that "everything" from my "Shortwave" circle appears in the main stream, "most things" from "Following," "fewer things" from "Longwave," fewer from "Celebs," and "nothing" from both "Google" and "News," since both of those I check manually, very often in the case of "News" and not so often for my "Google" circle (sorry Google).  Why am I telling you this?  I am telling you this to give you a sense of how one could have a use for more than two circles, and how one could possibly want easy access to those circles.  Or rather, I'm telling Google this (are you listening?) because it is apparent from the new Google Plus that this is not apparent to them.  The following screenshot shows how stream navigation has changed in the new Google Plus, and more specifically, it shows how I experienced the change initially:



All my circles, save "Shortwave" and "Following," initially, were hidden under "More."  Both of those circles feed into my main stream, so I don't often click on them.  That left the circles that I actually need easy access to hidden under "More."  That's a bad user experience, if you ask me.  I later found out that I can customize this, so the two circles that I need easy access to are shown, while the others are hidden.  The two.  Only two.  See a problem here?  Not to mention the customization I did wasn't exactly intuitive.

Having just two circles easily accessible actually works pretty well for me, but others may not be able to say that.  You could argue that "normal people" only want two circles within easy reach, but I don't think wanting, say, three within easy reach qualifies you as "abnormal."  A "normal" person might want "Friends," "News," and "What's Hot" within easy reach, for instance.  And about that "What's Hot" stream:  it's now called "Explore," and although you can set it to feed into your main stream in the exact same way you do a circle, it has been moved out of the stream navigation and into the "ribbon," making it less intuitive to just go to Google Plus and access great content.

I'll concede that at some point, people who use a product in crazy ways need to be ignored.  You can't please everyone.  But what Google Plus has done doesn't allow for even the slightest bit of flexibility.  What would allow for a reasonable amount of flexibility is if the streams remained on the side with room for various user "types."  Having them on the top greatly reduces room for flexibility.

It is evident why stream navigation was moved to the top.  The new "ribbon" now occupies the side, making it the centerpiece of interaction.  About that ribbon…

Who Needs a Logo?

I do not like the ribbon.  Even if it didn't ruin how I access content on Google Plus.  But maybe that's just a matter of opinion.  Sort of.  It probably could have been implemented better.  Specifically, I don't like how the ribbon and the Google Plus bar flow into one another.



Tentatively, I'm going to say that an improvement that could be made is to get rid of the Google Plus bar, stick a shortcut for search on the ribbon, and move the Google+ notification counter, account menu, and share button to the black navigation bar.  I wouldn't know where to put the logo though.  And that still doesn't solve the stream problem.

"Cards"

Posts on Google Plus are now contained in "cards."  They look like this:

.

Or, with my annotations, they look like this:



It just seems like a lot of lines. Also, the post section and comments section have different widths, because the comments are now an always open drawer.  I'm not a fan of this style, but I think it could have at least been better executed.  Add a little depth; make it look a little 3D.

Not to mention, I hate this shape:

White Space

I think the white space thing is a problem, but the problem isn't necessarily white space; it's distribution of white space:  things should be more centered, basically.

Google, We Need to Talk

It is clear from the changes that the Google Plus team sees a real need for change.  They want to make Google+ more attractive to potential users and they are working towards that goal by both differentiating themselves (emphasis on hang-outs, the "Explore" feature) and following in the footsteps of others ("Trending on Google+", "Timeline-esque" profiles).  They wanted an interface that is better equipped to welcome new features, and we can't blame them for that.  But I happen to think it is possible to do all that, without throwing away the perfectly good, really good looking interface that I came to see as synonymous with Google Plus.

How do you feel about the new Google Plus?  Feel free to converse below.

April 14, 2012:  This post has been edited to add an overall screenshot of the new Google Plus. This screenshot is the top-most screenshot in this post.

UPDATE April 14, 2012:  Remember when I said "try not to get mad at me if you feel strongly one way or another"?  Well, I'm not saying anyone got mad at me, but clearly I feel strongly one way, and I talked to a friend who feels strongly another.  In the interest of a more balanced discussion— and he basically is forcing me to do this ;)—I will list some things I like about the new Google Plus changes.  I like that the "Share" button on posts and the +1 button on brand pages are more prominent, I like the "Trending on Google+" feature and other discovery features, I think I like the new profiles (even though they borrow from Facebook a bit), and I've heard that the performance of the site is better and responds faster to user interaction.  And I also love Google Plus, and I still do, though my unadulterated admiration for the network is currently suspended when it comes to certain aspects of the site.

"YouTube" on Navigation Bar Corruption of Search, but "Play" Friendly, Book Search Not So Friendly

On Monday, Google added its Google Play product to its arsenal of apps highlighted via the Google navigation bar, seen at the top of the screen when using Google branded products.  As is evident in the following screenshot, "Play" gets a spot to the right of "Images" and "Maps," with a red, all capitals, superscript "NEW" next to it.



Google Play is a new Google product that was released March 6, and it absorbed the Android Market, Google eBookstore, and Google Music products.  It competes with other digital content sellers, such as Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Apple's App Store and iTunes Store.  The move has been met with some criticism, and today I want to take a look at why.  We don't want our search to be corrupted, and the idea that the change could do such damage would certainly perturb some.  But I don't see how Google advertising its digital content product corrupts search.  There is the argument that Google might decide to favor its own Google Play pages in its web search results, similar to an argument that Google could favor pages with AdSense ads in its results.  Indeed, Google has done something like that with its favoring of Google book offerings within Book Search (but the severity of this does not come close to that of the possibility of Google distorting otherwise honest result rankings).



The screenshot above is from a search for a book I am currently reading, In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives by Stephen Levy (I'm reading it on my Amazon Kindle).  The "Buy eBook" button is prominent, and instead of providing options, connects you to Google Play.  In the nicest interpretation possible, Google sees easing the process of purchase the natural extension of making searching for books convenient.  But these two things could be a conflict of interest, and not just a potential one.  Google flaunting its own offerings would of couse be okay if Book Search were "Google eBook Offerings" or "Google Play Books," but it's not:  Book search is a category within web search, and it is a product that people use to search the open bookasphere (totally just coined that term), just as people would search the open web.  Users of search are looking for the best information possible, and a link to buy is information in and of itself.  (The information is:  this book is available for purchase through Google.)  Why not "an eBook is available for purchase through Barnes & Noble?"  For a store, digital or otherwise, the answer is easy:  people decide to shop at a particular store for their own reasons.  They're not looking for the best possible information, information that could lead them to a particular store; they've already picked the store they want to shop at.  But Book Search is not a store.  If Google really wanted to provide the best possible information, then it wouldn't be exclusive to its own content offerings in Book Search.  To be fair, the page for In the Plex, offered a number of options for buying a print copy of the book, but the only option for buying an e-book was through Google (note:  Google doesn't sell print books).  And that's a little disappointing, since there are other players in the e-book space, and big ones at that:  Amazon has at least 60 percent of the e-book market, and Barnes & Noble has about 27 percent, according to the company's CEO.

Where information is concerned, Google is often just information retrieval.  But in the case of directing users to purchase opportunities from Book Search, the information that Google provides is a little more Google's responsibility.  When I searched for "Public Libraries and the Internet" on Book Search, the Google Books page for the book currently sitting next to me displayed the words "No eBook available."  A prominent red button told me to "Get Print Book."  Google was offering me many sellers from which to buy a print copy of the book, including Amazon and Barnes & Noble, in the absence of a Google offering.  But in the absence of a Google e-book, will Google tell me where I can get a copy from another e-book seller, if one is available?  I've sent an inquiry to Google, but I've also gone ahead and found Public Libraries and the Internet on Amazon's Kindle catalogue.  Not looked for, found.  No e-book available, you sure about that, Google?  I also tried this for Human Rights in International Investment Law and Arbitration (Oxford University Press, Google Books page, Kindle), Essentials of Sports Law (ABC-CLIO, 4th edition, Google Books page, Nook), and Forensic Entomology: An Introduction (John Wiley & Sons, Google Books page, Kindle, Nook).  Don't ask how I chose/found examples.  



Does Google's integration of what is now "Play" into Book Search represent a corruption of search?  If we're just talking the integration itself, I don't think so.  Corruption is a strong word.  Consumers know they can click the "buy" button to buy from Google and they can go to amazon.com if they want to buy from Amazon.  Smaller players, though, might be more obscured than if Google Book Search were a more "pure" search product.  It's something to consider.  But it's not really cause for alarm.  What is cause for alarm, however, is when Google proclaims "No eBook available," when there clearly is an e-book available, and it's not clear that it's worth searching Amazon, because after all, Google will tell you when there's a print copy available on Amazon.  (I should also note there is a "Find in a library" option that only appears when there is "No eBook available" from Google.)

Does Google's recent "navbar" change, then, represent a corruption of search?  I definitely don't think so.  First of all, Google Play in the navigation bar has nothing to do with search other than the fact that when you're at Google.com conducting a search, the word "Play" watches over you.

However, Google's placement of YouTube in the navigation bar, in my opinion, does represent a corruption of search.  The YouTube link is simply a link to YouTube, just as the Play link is simply a link to Google Play, but unlike the Play link, when you click the YouTube link after entering a query into Google, that query is delivered to YouTube, and thus YouTube becomes one of Google's many search options.  But unlike other search options designed to filter your results by a particular type of result, YouTube effectively filters your results based on the statement "from YouTube.com = YES."  What's worse is Google has a video search option which filters based on the type of content (video), but it's not on the navigation bar.  One can access it by entering a search into Google, and then selecting "Videos" on the left side of the page.



My search for Hello World, filtered to just videos, yielded ten results, four of which were not from YouTube.  From a search perspective, there is no reason to be limited to videos from YouTube.  And Google wants me to have the best possible search results, right?  The argument could be made that the navigation bar is really just a showcase of Google's best and/or most popular products, and among them happens to be some search products, as well as YouTube, which isn't a search product, but for convenience's sake Google made the YouTube link pick up on queries users have typed into Google.  I understand this argument, but the YouTube link on the navigation bar is much more prominent then the "Videos" option in search.  And since there are lots of videos on YouTube, searching via the YouTube link works just well enough to forget there's a whole web out there.  One could get in the habit of just clicking the YouTube link, and never use Google's Video Search.  And that, my friends, is why the YouTube link on the navigation bar is a corruption of search.  But that corruption does not lie in YouTube's mere presence on that sacred black bar.  I would be 100 percent satisfied if the YouTube link just took you to YouTube's homepage 100 percent of the time.

Google Play on the navigation bar does not corrupt search (in my opinion).  So what does it corrupt?  Does it corrupt the very being of that company we call Google, that mythical company that only has one product and will never, ever expand?  More likely, it doesn't corrupt anything.  And it's not unfriendly to users.  Google Play is a friendly store where all users are welcome to come and shop books, movies, and music, no matter their OS (movies are available for rent).  Android users also have apps they can buy.

I think we need to stop objecting to companies promoting their products (or is it just Google?).  When Google promotes its products, we talk about it as if the company is abusing its clout in one industry, search, for undeserved gain.  Who's to say Google doesn't deserve the fruit of its marketing efforts?  When Google wants to start a new venture, should they play a game of hide-and-go-seek until they're discovered?  Is this for added integrity or is it to ensure fair play with other companies?  I don't think Google would be doing the world a favor by ensuring fair play in this way.  Take Google Plus:  though it has had its fair share of judgement, I think it's a great product, and Google would be doing the world a great service by promoting it to the ends of the Earth.  That being said, Google using its existing products to promote the social network could potentially put the company at an unfair advantage to small Facebook-like startups… if those startups—seeking to serve exactly the same function as Facebook but do it better—had a chance anyway.  They don't.  And Google Plus won't have a chance to be a real Facebook competitor unless Google continues to do what it's doing, which is simply making people know that another option exists, whilst Facebook retains people simply by virtue of the network effect.

Admittedly, what Google is doing is more than simply making people know that Google Plus exists; there are some legitimate concerns, and I will be addressing these concerns in future posts, but we need to stop being so averse to Google promoting their products.  I'll admit, as a Kindle owner, it annoys me that at Barnes & Noble, everything is stamped with "Nook," but that doesn't make Barnes & Noble bad (or evil, in Google lingo) because of it.

Making Birthdays More Valuable and Following in Pinterest's Footsteps

Remember in grade school when you would pin a dollar to your shirt to signify that it was your birthday?  Your classmates would give you more dollar bills, and you would have the whole day to add to your collection.  (Maybe you don't; it's not everybody's tradition, and it wasn't mine, but it was the tradition of some people in my school.)  The other day, I had an idea:  the digital equivalent of dollar pinning.  Amazon and iTunes allow users to gift some very inexpensive items (with prices as low as 69 cents).  I don't know whether people are taking advantage of this for their friends' birthdays, but if they are, the return probably doesn't come close to that of the dollar pinning method.  Facebook reminds you of friends' birthdays, and suggests you say "happy birthday"; couldn't the site also suggest you buy your friend a song?  A partnership between Facebook and Amazon, for instance, could make this come to life.  A popular birthday celebrant could easily hit an annual jackpot of 20 songs if this caught on (or not: define "caught on").  What matters is not whether it would catch on, however; what matters is that it would be kind of cool.  And, it would make money for Facebook using a method the company probably hasn't used before (until perhaps recently), a method akin to Pinterest's model.

Pinterest makes money when a user shares a "cute set of tea cups" on the site; if the "pin" links to an e-commerce site with an affiliate program, Pinterest adds its own tracking code to the link (using a service called Skimlinks).  The company's practice was uncovered recently by LLSocial.  Facebook might be using a similar system to make money from some of its "frictionless sharing" partners.  I contacted Spotify, but I was told the company does not comment on its finances or commercial relationships.

February 28 is my birthday.  Happy birthday to you, if your birthday is also in February.

"How Target Figured Out A Teen Girl Was Pregnant Before Her Father Did" (and what the takeaway is)

Today The New York Times published a long article that goes into detail about ad targeting practices by multiple companies, and also explains how ad targeting works and the behavioral science behind it.  The article, by Charles Duhigg, a staff writer for the Times who has written a book on the science of habits, focuses primarily on Target, a company that "knows" when your pregnant, and will send you ads for baby items accordingly.  I almost used the word "appropriately," instead of "accordingly," which would be a grave mistake, considering the word's connotation and judging by the fact that Target's program, at least at one time, used snail mail to deliver targeted advertisements to those expecting.  Duhigg shares this anecdote, which Forbes' Kashmir Hill (whose headline I quoted in my headline) describes as "so good that it sounds made up" (by Duhigg or one of his sources though Hill doesn't specify):

"About a year after Pole [Andrew Pole, an employee of Target working for its Guest Marketing Analytics department who was interviewed for the piece] created his pregnancy-prediction model, a man walked into a Target outside Minneapolis and demanded to see the manager.  He was clutching coupons that had been sent to his daughter, and he was angry, according to an employee who participated in the conversation.

'My daughter got this in the mail!' he said.  'She's still in high school, and you're sending her coupons for baby clothes and cribs?  Are you trying to encourage her to get pregnant?'

The manager didn't have any idea what the man was talking about.  He looked at the mailer.  Sure enough, it was addressed to the man's daughter and contained advertisements for maternity clothing, nursery furniture and pictures of smiling infants.  The manager apologized and then called a few days later to apologize again.

On the phone, though, the father was somewhat abashed.  'I had a talk with my daughter,' he said.  'It turns out there's been some activities in my house I haven't been completely aware of.  She's due in August.  I owe you an apology.'"

Target later stopped being so obvious with its targeting of ads, and started embedding ads for toys and cribs amongst ads for random products (or rather, products selected to make the ads for toys and cribs look random).  But first, how does Target know when your pregnant?

Target has a system that assigns unique identifiers to its customers whenever possible; the system uses trackable methods of interaction with the store, such as credit card payments, to sign you up with a "Guest ID number."  Then, the data collecting commences.  Data sources are both internal (e.g. what you buy at Target), and external (e.g. data Target buys).  As for external sources, "Target can buy data about your ethnicity, job history… if you’ve ever declared bankruptcy or got divorced, the year you bought (or lost) your house… what kinds of topics you talk about online, whether you prefer certain brands of coffee… your political leanings, reading habits… and the number of cars you own."  Target has been collecting "vast amounts" of data on regular customers "for decades," according to Duhigg.

But you need somebody to make sense (and drive profit from) all of that data.  That's where people like Andrew Pole come into play.  As Andreas Weigend, the former chief scientist at Amazon.com, pointed out (as was quoted by Duhigg), "Mathematicians [have become] suddenly sexy."  When Pole devised a system for determining if a woman was pregnant based on the available data, he soon found himself at meetings above his paygrade.  Here's what Pole's system entailed:

"Target has a baby-shower registry, and Pole started there, observing how shopping habits changed as a woman approached her due date, which women on the registry had willingly disclosed.  He ran test after test, analyzing the data, and before long some useful patterns emerged.  Lotions, for example.  Lots of people buy lotion, but one of Pole’s colleagues noticed that women on the baby registry were buying larger quantities of unscented lotion around the beginning of their second trimester.  Another analyst noted that sometime in the first 20 weeks, pregnant women loaded up on supplements like calcium, magnesium and zinc.  Many shoppers purchase soap and cotton balls, but when someone suddenly starts buying lots of scent-free soap and extra-big bags of cotton balls, in addition to hand sanitizers and washcloths, it signals they could be getting close to their delivery date."

The information that someone is pregnant is very valuable to Target:

"There are, however, some brief periods in a person's life when old routines fall apart and buying habits are suddenly in flux.  One of those moments — the moment, really — is right around the birth of a child, when parents are exhausted and overwhelmed and their shopping patterns and brand loyalties are up for grabs.  But as Target’s marketers explained to Pole, timing is everything.  Because birth records are usually public, the moment a couple have a new baby, they are almost instantaneously barraged with offers and incentives and advertisements from all sorts of companies.  Which means that the key is to reach them earlier, before any other retailers know a baby is on the way."

And as Duhigg argues, Target's increase in profits is largely attributable to Pole's program:

"Soon after the new ad campaign began, Target's Mom and Baby sales exploded.  The company doesn't break out figures for specific divisions, but between 2002 — when Pole was hired — and 2010, Target's revenues grew from $44 billion to $67 billion.  In 2005, the company's president, Gregg Steinhafel, boasted to a room of investors about the company's 'heightened focus on items and categories that appeal to specific guest segments such as mom and baby.'"

As you might expect, Target was disgruntled (a stronger word perhaps?) by Mr. Duhigg's research into this matter, and the company appears to have prevented Mr. Pole from speaking with Duhigg, who was prohibited from visiting Target's headquarters.  ("I’ve been instructed not to give you access and to ask you to leave," said a "very nice security guard named Alex.")

What's the takeaway?

I always look for concretes.  If there is an issue with data being public, I try and think of a concrete way in which that data could hurt someone.  In this case, that concrete example has been identified already, and it is the father finding out his daughter is pregnant through a catalogue.  So what led to that?  Well, Target was sending these personalized catalogues in the mail.  If the catalogues were being sent via email, it would be a bit of a different situation.  But not a very different situation, as I will soon explain.  There are a few problems with sending catalogues in the mail that are targeted based on the fact that you're pregnant:

1) You might know that Target knows.
Target has made its targeted advertisements more subtle, but you still might be able to figure it out.  Worse, your friends or parents might be able to figure it out.  And since you haven't figured it out, you see nothing wrong with showing them your catalogue ("check this out!").

2) You know they know, and you also know you didn't give them that information.
If people haven't already come to understand that Facebook targets ads based on the things you "like" and the things you post, they will.  It will be common knowledge in the future if it isn't already.  But you're giving that information to Facebook explicitly.  The reaction is, "Oh, okay, they've personalized my ads."  The reaction to Target's catalogues (when people realize their ads are being personalized) is likely to be less friendly (especially when people realize Target knows they're pregnant).

3) The catalogue can easily be read by someone it is not intended for.
Inferences can be made.

4) Pregnancy is sensitive information.
You might not want everyone knowing you're pregnant.  You also might not want to be reminded that you're pregnant.  Say you're a teen giving your baby up for adoption:  a barrage of advertisements for toys and cribs might make you change your mind, and that is an extremely bad thing if you are not in a stage of life or environment that is suited for child-rearing, which you aren't in if you're a teen.  It's not just bad for you, it has profound implications for the child.


Numbers 1, 2, and 4 explain why sending these personalized advertisement by email wouldn't help much.  So is there a way that Target can personalize ads without violating privacy?  I don't know.  I can't think of a way, but that doesn't mean there isn't one.  There is also the question of how Target is obtaining the data:  the buying and selling of data, for instance, is not a topic I have researched, and thus I won't comment on it at this time, but it doesn't make me very comfortable.

I want to say I would like to see targeting advertisements based on pregnancy made illegal, but that is a bold statement, and I try to sit on such opinions for a longer time before I make them official.

An interesting part of Duhigg's article that I did not yet touch on is the concepts of how habits are formed and their nature.  The science of habits is particularly relevant to marketing, Duhigg explains.  Marketers try to tap into the "cue, routine, reward" system that drives so much of our behavior.  In the case of Target:

"…if Target piggybacked on existing habits — the same cues and rewards they already knew got customers to buy cleaning supplies or socks — then they could insert a new routine:  buying baby products, as well.  There's a cue ("Oh, a coupon for something I need!") a routine ("Buy! Buy! Buy!") and a reward ("I can take that off my list").  And once the shopper is inside the store, Target will hit her with cues and rewards to entice her to purchase everything she normally buys somewhere else.  As long as Target camouflaged how much it knew, as long as the habit felt familiar, the new behavior took hold."

It is interesting just how much our behavior is predetermined so-to-speak, both by our biology (how our brains work) — and because of our biology, or perhaps our bottom line — coupons.

Perhaps if we were more discriminating about our purchasing decisions, and less automatic, Target wouldn't be so concerned about targeting ads.  There might not be as much in it for them.  Or perhaps there still would be.  What do you think?  Comment below.

Valentine's Day Google Doodle Made Me Smile

Today's Google doodle is too cute.  Clicking the Valentine plays a nice little Valentine's Day short with Tony Bennett's performance of "Cold, Cold Heart" for the soundtrack.



Happy Valentine's Day!

Buy Where You Shop

A week ago, in response to a new study by the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project, I devised a few principles brick-and-mortar shoppers should adhere to to be polite:

No entering stores you're not going to buy from.
If you know you're always going to buy online, or at another store, don't walk in the door.

Entering a store you might buy from, on the other hand, is okay.
It would be a bit draconian to say otherwise.  You're a potential customer, and I'm sure the store is happy to have your potential business.

Looking up competitor's prices on the internet is okay.
That is, if you know you might buy the product(s) in the store you're in.

Using your phone to do so is not.
Not while you're still in the store.  Salespeople can tell you're either looking up competitor's prices or searching for product reviews—you don't look like you're texting and you're standing in front of a product—and although both are okay things to do, you shouldn't rub it in their faces.  You can, however, go home to "think about it," and then come back if need be.  Or if it's a larger store where nobody notices you're there anyway, you can sneak out to your car to use your phone and then sneak back in.

Calling a friend to ask about a purchasing decision is okay wherever you are.
As I explained in my post, store staff would be "jumping to conclusions if they thought you were calling another store to ask about pricing."  Yes, you might be on the phone repeatedly referring to the items in front of you, but you could just be seeking your friend's counsel on which of those items you should buy.

Hang on, what were you saying about going home?
Who is this Solomon Garner asking me to go all the way home only to travel all the way back later in the week?  Yes, that's what I want you to do; or rather, that's what I said you can do.  You can also choose to be in the dark about competitors' prices, if you think the store's price is reasonable.  You can buy the product, and then go home and be happy.  This seems like the most practical option, and an experienced shopper will still be able to shop with confidence, without pulling out his or her phone.  If you're really uncomfortable with that idea, maybe you should be buying less.

UPDATE 2/15/12 (Post continued after the break):  It is also an option to start your shopping at home, using the websites of brick-and-mortar stores in addition to your favorite e-commerce sites.  Or, if you prefer, just e-commerce sites; physical stores are valuable in many ways, and I would like to keep them alive (certain ones), but this is a discussion of manners, not of business models.  Also, in addition to being able to "sneak out to your car," you're welcome to go to the restroom to use your phone.  This deems the car idea pretty moot, unless you have better bars out there.  Just keep it in your pocket when you actually have to go, thank you ;)

UPDATE 2/16/12:  It has been brought to my attention that it might be harder than I had previously thought to get a sense of prices.  For instance, the holiday season might complicate that process.  While I realize one can feel like a lot is expected of them during the holidays, perhaps our society needs to have a conversation about changing that.  I think the solution probably lies with us.  I think there shouldn't be as much pressure on people to find deals.



It just so happens, as I discovered yesterday, that Tim O'Reilly preached the first of these principles, and extended it, in a 2003 essay called Buy Where You Shop.  In the essay, O'Reilly recounts a conversation he had with someone* at a specialty computer bookstore in Massachusetts.  Online discount stores, this person explained, were dealing a low blow to his business.  Customers would leave the store, and on their way out, they would explain that they could get a better price online.  O'Reilly explains that when we utilize the services provided by a store, we should also buy at that store, for the sake of fairness to the retailer and in addition, for the sake of buying based on what we value.  If we value the services that our local bookstore provides us, we should support the longevity of those services.  I should take this time to point out that O'Reilly emphasizes independent bookstores in his essay, but both of his points extend to chains too:  you mustn't treat people unfairly, and in addition, at least in my humble opinion, if you value your local ultra-successful chain store location, you should support what you value (if for nothing else, to get that nice doing-good feeling inside).

What are your principles as a shopper and as a citizen of the digital age?  Comment in the comments.

UPDATE 2/16/12 (I promise this is the last update):  I updated my original post with the following message, and I want to reiterate here:  "I know some will consider my opinions overbearing, and some will be defensive of their own habits, but I would hope that people consider every consequence that their digital devices are having on the feelings of others, and not just the obvious ones.  And for those of you who are wondering, yes, if I felt the need to look up something online while in a store, I would go out to my car to do it, or to the restroom."  Call me crazy.

Footnotes:
* Due to a pronoun reference issue in Mr. O'Reilly's essay, it is unspecified who this "someone" is, but the corresponding pronoun "he" in Mr. O'Reilly's essay most likely refers to the owner of the specialty bookstore in question.