I got the chance to talk today with someone who worked on walmart.com. She said something that made a lot of sense – that walmart.com takes every design to usability, because they understand that they are designing for the lowest common denominator. The least frequent internet users.

While the concept makes sense, I think Facebook might have overestimated their audience’s level of savvy — or, more accurately, the intuitiveness of their design.

It’s just not clear how the thing works, and only time will tell if that’s something their newfound audience of 55+ will overcome.

I am thankful that Facebook made this change. I prefer to read the actual news about my friends separate from “news” about game and other application activity.

I’m sure that my friends are sick of seeing these messages and likely hide my messages from their feed. So I become conflicted about letting an application post to my wall. I want to share with a specific audience not my entire friend list.

This should dramatically help with the flood.

Musicovery was my first love but is now dated, and last.fm is an absolute joke. I’ve heard a lot of good things about grooveshark recently–I’ll check it out.

You should never offer your product for a discount. In the mind of the consumers you became worth your discounted price (say 50 cents), they will never pay full price for you ($1) because you have solidified in their mind your place as a 50 cent product. Pandora was known for free music.
Invoking a billed price will only have users flock to another site “Jrea: grooveshark.com” which I’m sure is very eager to take over some pandora traffic.

Had they said, “if you like acai, consider…” my choices would have been limited from the get go. Or something like, “if you’re looking to be energized…”. Maybe even a step by step starting with a base flavor, add a liquid, add some crunch, add more fruit…or whatever, so you know you start with the base flavor and those individual lists look manageable. Categorization can go a long way.

Nice post.