I don’t usually cover new Social Networking apps. But, I’m an iPhone addict and I finally came across an easy to use posting tool that might reduce the barrier to use for me, enough to make it something that I might do. Easy to use, but a bit of a pig to install on the iPhone. Looks like it is backed by the UK based VC Saul Klein and his father - who had a hand in Skype and Last.fm amongst others. I vaguely know Saul and Robin.
Of course, getting the answers to installation involved using search engines. Where, again, I’ve found problems and some illumination.
Twitxr (pronounced Twitcher) is like Twitter and Facebook news. You update what you are doing and your network of friends and followers can keep track. You can subscribe to other people’s profiles to become a follower. There’s an iPhone app, so I can tap iTwitxr, tell it I want a photo, click, add a caption and submit. Seriously easy.
Installation, though, is another story, poorly explained on the web site. Which is, of course, the other reason that I’m interested. I love working out why conversion rates are low. :)
Here’s the original installation instructions…
Here’s what you actually have to do… Note that you *probably* need a WiFi connection to make this work quickly. You might even need a WiFi connection to have it work at all - I haven’t tried without WiFi, yet.
- Use your Mac or PC to find Installer.app (I downloaded and used ZiPhone) - harder to do than it sounds for a neophyte, non-Tech iPhone user, and scary
- On the Mac or PC, use iTunes to “Restore” the iPhone - also scary for non-Tech users, but works really well with iTunes.
- On the Mac or PC, run ZiPhone to just “Jailbreak”
- The iPhone will do a little reset dance.
- On the iPhone, tap on the “Installer” icon.
- On the iPhone, “Install” the “Community Sources” found under “Sources.
- On the iPhone, “Install” iTwixter
- On the iPhone, return to the Home screen and tap the “iTwitxr” icon.
- On the iPhone, enter the Twitxr account name and password.
- Take a photo (if you haven’t already) - iTwixter appears to fail if you don’t.
After that, it’s easy. You can tap the Twitxr icon, tap “Take a Photo”, snap, add comment, and submit.
So far, I’ve only used this over WiFi, where it is pretty fast. Take a look at my Twitxr page. It’s taken me an order of magnitude longer to write this up, than it took to do the postings.
What went wrong?
Firstly, the most common references for “Installer.app” point to a page that appears to stop at iPhone firmware from last year. There have been two iPhone updates this year (1.1.3 and 1.1.4). The way that search works, if a blog article was about “Installer.app”, and another article link includes “1.1.4″, then you get a search engine result with irrelevant results. This is because there’ll be a lot of links to the first Installer.app and relatively fewer, but graudally increasing, for later and perhaps better answers.
First lesson: don’t make users search when you can give a link. Solution: link from “Installer.app” in the text, to something like ZiPhone and make it easier for users to get the solution in one step.
There is a reference in the FAQ to installing Community Sources. However, that reference should be on the page - and clearer. Where are these community sources? On the web? Installed through iTunes? This text assumes that the user already know Installer.app functions and may have installed other stuff already.
Second lesson: assume that your users don’t know anything complex. It’s better to explain the steps than assume your users can figure it out. The more complex the steps, the less likely that it’ll get worked out. OTOH, the challenge of getting it working can lead to a real sense of accomplishment and some dedicated users… but a lower volume. Off hand, of all the people that I know to have an iPhone, I’d guess that more than half would have been completely stumped at this point, and would have either asked me or another techie friend, or given up. Since this is a social networking app, ease of use is paramount - or you won’t get the Metcalfe critical mass to to make it work.
Third Lesson: SEO and search engine results - this ties peripherally to Jakob Nielsen’s latest newsletter about microformats and search engine results. Spotting the best result in the random garbage and unhelpful blog entries, was difficult for me. Snippet control will give you clearer messages that will drive up organic CTR. However, in this case, the problem is more complex, because Twitxr have no control over the search engine listings for ZiPhone. Better to have users avoid resorting to search, at all.
Details, shmetails
There’s actually some more deceptive problems - the previous release of iTwitxr is found, if you don’t install the Community Sources. This fails to install. The error message doesn’t lead to a solution.
Locations shown in Twitxr are, on a global scale, close. However, it isn’t using the iPhone’s geolocation software. My current location on Twitxr is shown about eight miles to the south west of the right location. The iPhone, using local mobile phone transmitters, places me about four miles north east of the right position. I’m interested in what they are using for geolocation - it doesn’t show a location that anything else does.
Summary
I corresponded with the very responsive “Albert” at Twitxr, who helped me with some steps. He’s also already updated the instructions page. As of a few minutes ago, this article is still a better description of installation. ;)
Updates
03-Mar-2008 Albert tells me that Twitxr isn’t backed by Saul Klein.
03-Mar-2008 Victor (Twitxr leader) says that geolocation is derived from the iPhone’s internet connection. Which is odd, because I didn’t move more than about 10 metres doing my initial test postings, but moved about 10 miles according to positional data.
09-Mar-2008 I think I know what happened with the initial position. I was visiting someone close to the first registered position and used the iPhone map location function, a day before. I didn’t use that location function, for my current location, until after the first couple of postings - when the position changed. You may need to manually invoke the iPhone Map Position function, at least until the SDK or current location functions are evoked.
