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YouAre Blog 2008 September 8 YouAre and the little details

YouAre and the little details

September 8th, 2008 · José Luis Antúnez · 8 Comments

One of the advantages that a product like YouAre has is that it was inspired by other applications that we realized had unsatisfied needs or missing things that we took care of in our own application, greatly improving user experience.

In addition, these other services were developed from an English-centric point of view. Although YouAre is in English, one of our areas of improvement is the optimize usability to provide for the particularities of other languages.

Here are just a few of the small details you might be able to notice on the user side:

  • Filtering of updates by type of contact
  • When writing or pasting in a URL, characters aren’t subtracted
  • Recognition of URLs that have been shortened

    When you publish a URL with more than 50 characters, our system automatically shortens it to a URL like this one: http://micurl.com/0hupfc. If are logged in to YouAre, place the cursor on the link and look towards the lower left of your browser. There you’ll see the source URL.
    This is convenient because it lets you see if you really want to click what’s there, if the content is NSFW, etc.

  • Many languages use accent marks. YouAre doesn’t subract characters for those.

    This is a highly requested feature in Twitter that tends to annoy many users.

  • Same search results, with or without accents.

    When you look for a person or a place that contains an accent mark in the name and you don’t include the accent, the search engine doesn’t filter the results and will return results for both. For example, if you search “José”, the YouAre search engine will also show you users who spell their name (no accent) and vice versa.

    While it might seem like a minor detail, most social applications only show you results for exactly what you have written, which makes users or places which accent marks “invisible”, since users who aren’t used to writing accent marks are the majority.

  • Friendly URLs

    While this might be an widely spread idea and not very innovative, very few networks really pay attention to having friendly URLs. In YouAre, permalinks are similiar to URLs used in blogs:
    http://youare.com/username/yyyy/mm/dd/idnum.

    With this URL format, it’s easier to keep an ordered record of what you did on a certain day or month. The URLs for files are also friendly (http://youare.com/username/videos), as well as location (http://youare.com/country/city) and search results (http://youare.com/search/name).

  • Instant erase of content without reloading the page makes things a lot faster.
  • Link to print a resumé within the profile. A detail that is quite simple but also very useful if you are the process of recruiting candidates for a certain position.
  • If you publish links with .pdf or .zip you will have a small icon reflecting it.
  • The email that lets you know you have a new follower includes the 140 character bio of the user. That way, if you don’t know the person, you have more information about them which will help you decide whether you want him or her in your network.
  • When you reply you do not have to begin the post with @username.
  • Videos on popular sites start automatically. Following the philosophy of “as few clicks as possible”, when you publish a video and you go to the permalink, you won’t have to play, as it will play automatically.
  • QR Code for each update

Any and all feedback is welcome!

Filed under: Features, IA / Usability.
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8 Comments » Add your own

  1. September
    8th, 2008
    2:33 pm

    José Luis said:

    Great team, great job! Congratulations

  2. September
    18th, 2008
    5:05 am

    kestrachern said:

    Looks very promising. Excitedly awaiting beta invitation!

    :-)

  3. October
    17th, 2008
    11:16 am

    Gerard said:

    great job, i received invitation and will try soon!!

  4. December
    4th, 2008
    2:32 am

    Jeremy said:

    Still haven’t received invitation but I’m waiting :) really want to try this!

  5. February
    6th, 2009
    3:10 pm

    Maura said:

    Great job. Thanks your. :)

  6. February
    8th, 2009
    6:34 am

    Robt.D.McKenzie said:

    Have I overLooked the example page or screenShots?

  7. August
    18th, 2009
    11:01 pm

    Jordan said:

    Just wanted to point out a typo in your documentation:

    “permalink, you won’t have to play, asi it will play automatically.”

    Noticebly the phrase “asi it” – you all accidentally (i assume) threw in an extra ‘i’ in there. Might wanna fix that (to reflect your professional outlook.)

    Regards,
    Jordan

  8. December
    17th, 2009
    4:20 am

    Is YouAre.com the Next Twitter 2.0? A Look at YouAre.com a Micro-blogging Tool said:

    [...] 14. Other advantages from their blog: http://blog.youare.com/2008/09/08/youare-little-details/ [...]

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