Making Mixi Better

22 Feb 2006 Category: Features, Internet, Japan, Technology

Making Mixi Better

How do you improve on Mixi?

One of the biggest buzzwords flying about the web nowadays is “Web 2.0″. This means different things to different people. Mostly it seems to be a catch-all buzzword for the recent developments in the way websites are built, such as the increase in popularity and support of AJAX and Javascript visual effects. Whilst I certainly agree that such features do represent a new way of thinking and have aided the functionality of many new web services, Web 2.0 - to me - has much more to do with the human and social aspect of the internet. There is much more call for interaction between users and more importantly, much more willingness to interact.

In my eyes, Web 2.0 is more of a paradigm shift in people’s attitude towards the web - brought on in part by the massive popularity of blogging - and the adoption of these new technologies and web services are simply the result of that. Web 2.0 is, to me, the “social internet”.

Written by Jon.

The new internet is social

Where did this all start? Arguably, one of the biggest proponents of this paradigm shift was the existence of community websites. These are websites that bring people together, let them share thoughts, photos etc and network with each other. This genre of site existed way before the current popular Web 2.0 services such as del.icio.us, flickr etc. However, I believe it was exactly this genre of website that paved the way for the more social internet - the one in which now, more focused services such as the aforementioned del.icio.us and flickr are able flourish.

flickr has benefited from internet users’ increased willingness to interact and share

In this article I’m going to take a look at two of the most popular current examples of community websites, one from Japan and one from the West. Since PingMag has both Japanese and Non-Japanese readers - who are likely to not have seen either of the two websites - I’m going to briefly compare them. Finally, I’m going to critically analyse the Japanese version and show how I think it could be improved.


The humble “logo” of Myspace

The Mixi logo

Myspace is arguably the most popular community web service in the English-speaking internet world. It currently has something in the region of 57 million users and is a staple website of teenagers everywhere. Mixi is the current king of community websites in Japan and has around 2.7 million users. Both are wildly popular in their own right, and both have an extremely loyal user base.

The Myspace homepage

Myspace had very humble beginnings and it shows. It was developed by a single person and uses the fairly esoteric CFML scripting language. The whole design and layout has a very “amateur” feel to it, but I believe this partly contributes to its success with teenagers, who see it not as some giant, corporate-owned salute to capitalism (despite the fact that Myspace’s holding company was acquired last year by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation for $580 million) but as a friendly site that is administrated by one person.

The Mixi homepage

The Mixi homepage is slightly more “designed”, which you would expect having been created by a web services company here in Japan. I feel that the Mixi homepage is better than the Myspace homepage in terms of giving you a good cross-section of the activity on the site. The Mixi homepage shows you, at a glance, your friends’ latest blog posts, the latest messages in the “clubs” or “groups” you are in, the latest additions to your friends’ photo albums and gives you quick access to a selection of your friend’s homepages and group homepages. Note that whilst Myspace offers some of the same features on the homepage, the visual hierarchy is such that you have to search more for the information.

One of the main problems with these community websites is that gradually they provide users with more and more features to keep them satisfied, which results in a loss of focus. In the world of application development this is called “bloat”. The blind addition of new services and widgets that stray from the core function of the site, which are added in part to just keep up with trends or to compete with other web services. Both Myspace and Mixi are good examples of this.

An extended look at the Myspace homepage

The Myspace homepage’s visual hierarchy is as follows, from top to bottom:

  • Search
  • Advert
  • Navigation

(up until this point, we are ok)

  • My profile
  • Advert
  • Superfluous site statistics: This shows me how many users the site has - why do I need to know this if I am already a current user? This is useful for posturing or attracting new users, but to me these numbers are meaningless. I’m not going to remember the values between visits to consciously realise that the number of people has increased.
  • Myspace announcement
  • Cool New People: this shows a randomly selected new user. This could be useful if there was an algorithm behind it choosing new users with whom I might have something in common, but as it is, these people are of relatively little interest to me.
  • Featured Profile - seems to be another advert
  • Tell People About Myspace
  • My Mail
  • My Friends
  • My School Homepage (bloat)
  • My Bulletin Space

Note how My Mail, My Friends, and My Bulletin space - which are arguably the core functions of the site and the ones that I am most likely to find useful when readily accessible, are pushed down the the bottom of the page. Bad visual hierarchy.

The Mixi homepage is a lot more functional.

An extended look at the Mixi homepage

From top to bottom:

  • Advert (best place for it - it’s right out of the way)
  • Navigation
  • Sub-navigation
  • Search
  • Announcements
  • My user photo
  • A comprehensive list of site activity related to me: recent blog posts by my friends, recent posts in the groups I belong to, recently uploaded photos by my friends, recent reviews by my friends (Mixi reviews can be about anything) and a list of my most recent blog entries.
  • Access panel to friends: This shows a selection of 9 friends out of however many you have. I’m not sure how these are being picked - is it at random? Is it the most recently added? The ones who have updated something recently? I’m not sure, and it might be more useful if I was told.
  • Access panel to groups I’m in: as above.
  • List of people who have recently written you an “intro” (a part of your blog where your friends can say “this guy is awesome” etc).
  • On the far right (I have left this until last as it was only recently introduced) is bloat: News, Today’s Weather etc. These are better provided by other services, I feel (or by looking out the window) and although you gain something in terms of convenience by having these items on the home page, the cost - I feel - is greater; it adds to screen clutter.

Lets take a quick look at a typical Myspace page:

A typical Myspace page, belonging to an individual user

One of the main reasons of Myspace’s popularity that is also, in terms of usability a massive thorn in it’s side, is the fact that users can freely decorate their page however they like, using standard html. What this means is that user pages invariably become a cacophony of animated tiling backgrounds, bright pink fonts and annoying music that plays in the background whilst you try to browse a page. The positive side of this is that users are, as the site name suggests, able to create a real “space” for themselves. Rather than the page simply being a functional blog or notice board, the user’s page becomes more of an extension of themselves, adding more of a sense of loyalty to the site.

In contrast, a typical Mixi page looks quite bland.

A typical Mixi page, belonging to an individual user

All user pages on mixi look like this. There are no options for changing the layout. However, this is not such a terrible thing. I think this succeeds in getting people out of their own page and exploring the site - which is where the real content is and where the users are.

Whereas Myspace has very much a “come and look at my page” ideology behind it, Mixi encourages you to get out and interact more. In Myspace it is perfectly reasonable to never join a community, never post on the forum, and spend your whole time making your page look pretty for you to go and proudly post the link everywhere later, encouraging people to visit. In Mixi, the available options to the user are much more community-focused, encouraging you to be active in the community rather than spending time on your own.

However, as much as I think Mixi is a good example of a community website, I still feel there are a number of improvements to make.

Taking into account the points I made about visual hierarchy and adopting some of the general trends that we are seeing more of in the Web2.0 world, I have used the top page as an example and created what I think would be an improved top page for Mixi.

Note that I have not gone for a complete re-design. This is just an example of how I think Mixi could be improved by leveraging what they already have. There are other parts of the site that I think are flawed, such as the navigation that doesn’t show me where I am, and the completely illegible urls (for example if I sent you this link http://mixi.jp/view_community.pl?id=515 would you know where it went? Would you feel safe clicking on it? Wouldn’t http://mixi.jp/community/the_beatles/ be better?). But I’m not working for Mixi, I’m just sharing some ideas.

Here is Mixi before:

The Mixi homepage - before…

And after my little revamp (click for big version):

The Mixi homepage - after…Click for big version

What have I changed? In brief:

  • the English text font is now a sans serif font. Before it was a serif font (probably Times New Roman). It’s (fairly) commonly accepted that a sans-serif font is better for legibility on the web, and I tend to agree.

  • Under my profile picture I have removed the current two links that allow me to change my picture or view my profile. How often do I need to do these actions? In their place, I have put a link showing how many new mails I have and a link showing “recent activity” on my blog posts. These are functions I am more likely to need to check frequently.

  • This may differ for you, but for me the most important aspect of Mixi is keeping up to date with my friends’ blogs and my comments on those. For that reason I have given this part more focus - other items such as community news and photo updates (especially the latter, which doesn’t happen as frequently as the others) have been given less visual priority.

  • I have culled the “web” search. Does anyone search the web from inside Mixi? I have changed it to a review search.

  • I have culled every side panel widget. Personally, I don’t find them useful. News is borderline, but I still feel as if the benefit/cost ratio should swing in favour of making the content that is the most relevant to you as a mixi user (blog updates etc) the most prominent on the page. There are other sites that take care of my news and weather needs much better.

If you have your own ideas on how to improve Mixi or other Japanese web services, please write in the comments section below - I would be interested in hearing your thoughts.

44 Comments

  1. You forgot the biggest potential improvement for Mixi — an English language version!

    I’m only half-joking. One of the nice (and rare) things about Flickr is that it cuts across language and cultural barriers. You end up interacting with people across the world, which is a refreshing change.

    Posted by: Kai on February 23rd, 2006 at 12:58 am

  2. Nice writeup. I’ve been using Mixi for a while now and everytime I go back to Friendster, etc I cringe. I’ve always thought mixi was a prime design counterpoint to English language social networking sites. It’s good to see others of the same opinion!

    Posted by: Craig on February 23rd, 2006 at 1:54 am

  3. Nice article. I think one of the big pulls with MySpace is the ability to host and play MP3s - this then attracts ‘cool’ bands to the site, which in turn attracts The Kids; eager to be buds with their favourite bands and hear new music at the same time.

    I think Mixi looks much better, but as long as The Kids can customise their pages with Fall Out Boy wallpaper and what not, I don’t think they will really care about the original layout too much…

    Posted by: Tim on February 23rd, 2006 at 7:39 am

  4. I agree with your assessment of MySpace….it’s much like Xanga. I don’t know why, but there’s been a obssession with having a xanga website..so much so that my friend got one just because some of her friends had one, even when she didn’t want it. shakes head I like the look of Mixi, there’s another blog site called multiply.com which does pretty much the same as Mixi, except its in English…layout is much the same too and it only gives you limited control over its layout, unless you pay. But I think for this kind of thing, you don’t really concentrate on the looks but the content. So long as the information is in a good heirarchy, then people will be more inclined to read what is actually in the blog.

    Posted by: Grubbs on February 23rd, 2006 at 9:23 am

  5. Interesting. I discovered I already had an account with ‘MySpace’ when I registered for the second time a few months back. It originally gave me retina damage, more importantly the reason why I chose to forget quickly and stop using their “service”, was infact it became a vehical to spam users on a global scale. However, having gone back to it recently, little has change on the make-up front although they are finally warming up to the “webtwopointzero” evolution, which isn’t a bad thing, but it can be executed in a much better fashion! I’m still convinced that this is still a one man operation. Despite the funding behind it, I am completely stunned that little or no budget has been accounted for ongoing development and design. It’s horrifying to see such a site compiled in such an offending manner, it’s city! Tables nested in tables, nested inside tables!

    This is the first time I have caught wind of Mixi, and it’s certainly more structured and thought out, applying themed environments would be the next big step moving into the ‘MySpace’ territory perhaps? In an ideal world I guess it would be great to have an aesthetically pleasing design that is both scaleable and logical, multi-platform and cross-browser compatible.

    Posted by: Kenneth Tse on February 23rd, 2006 at 9:27 am

  6. The web 2.0 is giving us a lot of possibilities and the social content generated by million users will be the next focus in the publicity agencies. We have the knowledge to make the information reach our users and this is just a begin.

    Posted by: Eriksen on February 23rd, 2006 at 9:55 pm

  7. I feel that your ideas to improve Mixi are mostly superficial layout tweaks, and in no way go towards a more Web 2.0 direction.

    Regarding the serif font, it’s probably because it’s your browser’s default. Mixi’s stylesheet sets no font at all, respecting the user’s preferences.

    Posted by: Patrick on February 24th, 2006 at 12:23 am

  8. I think closer attention to IU is most definitely a web2.0 trait. It’s easy to think of a number of ways to make Mixi more web2.0 in other areas, such as making feeds for activity related to me, and AJAX-ifiying certain functions that would benefit from it, but in the end it’s not my job to give mixi a complete overhaul - as one of the forerunners of the social internet in Japan they should be doing that themselves.

    However, perhaps you misunderstood (or my title misled you) - the photoshop mashup was not an example of a Web2.0 mixi. Is it possible to show that in one photoshop image? As I stated in the article, it was merely an attempt at making an improved top page.

    Posted by: Administrator on February 24th, 2006 at 1:30 am

  9. One of the things I like about MySpace is the ability to upload a good number of larger size pictures along with your profile picture.
    I think that would be a great option for MIXI, as opposed to three little thumbnails that you can’t even enlarge.
    One funny thing that I’ve noticed about MySpace users is that they are much more likely to plaster their page with self-taken glamour shots (even if I’d rather they didn’t) than shots of their dog or their favorite band as seen on MIXI. C’mon, how am I supposed to cruise for chicks if I can’t see their face!? Excuse me while I upload that new pic of myself flexing in a tank top…

    Posted by: Dave on February 24th, 2006 at 3:54 am

  10. I tried to search for people with similar interests on Myspace the other day, its search system is absolutely pathetic and that is after you’ve trawled past all the band pages that appear among the users.
    Also the CSS file you change to customise your page has to be the single worst piece of CSS on the internet, web developers should definitely check it out for a laugh.

    Posted by: James on February 24th, 2006 at 7:56 am

  11. Indeed the title probably gave me hopes of a more in-depth makeover.

    I do agree that the recent new Mixi widgets (news and stuff) feel a bit useless and in the way, though maybe it’s a good idea to give Mixi some more portal aspect, so that more users decide to set Mixi as their “home page” in their browser instead of Yahoo or MSN.

    Posted by: Patrick on February 24th, 2006 at 8:04 am

  12. Some interesting thoughts there. All in all the fact that you didn’t redesign it all that much suggests that its not all that bad as it is… (could be better of course) I like the fact that you added customization to the communities and friends areas. I wouldn’t mind being able to reorder communities that I use frequently or friends that I send more messages to… Mixi also really needs to allow subscribing to community topics. People tend to sign onto 100 or more communities just for having “badges” on their profiles, but the top 5 on the right is just plain lacking in practicality. All in all, some good ideas there!

    Posted by: Ben List on February 25th, 2006 at 12:55 am

  13. you make some good points here, good read. However your comments about using different fonts… well technically it’s impossible to choose one font for the Japanese text and one for the English, as it’s all being inputted as the same char set. Also, it only appears in that charset on the mac (yes I use mac too), on the PC it uses msGothic which is far superior to Osaka in my view. (also firefox has bungled em sizes on the mac).
    I’m not sure I agree with your fixes, although it is good to see how mixi could work more efficiently; that is something that is being introduced with the new “hide” and “reveal” options.
    Personally I do look for the red “new mail” info, because I hate getting a real email telling me I have a mail in mixi :)

    Posted by: hawken king on April 17th, 2006 at 12:59 pm

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  15. Jon,

    Excellent article! would you have a way to recommend I contact / or intro the princpals of Mixi ? Below is an introduction of our company and why I’d like to speak with them. don’t hesitate to contact me with any questions.

    Our company, Exclaim, introduces new revenue channels as a central digital media management hub monetizing user-generated content (videos, photos, music, blogs) across your web and wireless properties. Exclaim hosts a private-label, fully-integrated digital media platform and we can brand it for your organization. We share revenue with you from monetizing user-generated content by means of photo printing/merchandising and premium web/wireless applications.
    Strategically, Exclaim delivers enterprise software, a fully integrated white-label media platform, and a fulfillment operation. Time-to-market and build vs. buy concerns are solved with our ability to quickly set up your branded solution to deepen your relationship with your users while also creating customers that generate revenue.
    Exclaim’s digital media platform means exciting new features for your users, who will come to your site to upload, store and share ALL their digital-media assets (videos, photos, music, blogs) anytime and accessible from web-wireless-home. You can increase your website ‘stickiness’ and can run self-liquidating marketing campaigns. Your users will voluntarily monetize their own content, which we revenue share with you, specifically as follows:
    Photo print and merchandising: Either you or we can host the images. We handle all back-end fulfillment including: e-store (130 items and growing monthly) / online shopping cart / custom pricing / 24-hour live customer service / credit card processing / product returns / warranties.
    We offer premium applications: Such as MediaMash, the only browser-based Flash presentation tool on the web which allows users to share their videos and photos, complete with transitions, music, graphics, editing tools, and narration. Also, our Pictavision wireless portal turns camera phones into digital cameras that can capture voice/video/photos and transmit them to the web or home – all within your branded environment.
    Lastly, we have been in business since 1999, operating our consumer properties, pictavision.com (wireless) and dotphoto.com (web), and have developed an effective customer service and fulfillment track record. To discover more about our company, please see http://www.exclaim.com .
    I welcome the opportunity to discuss our services with you or your colleagues, and answer questions or provide more information. I have a powerpoint which further explains our value proposition.

    Best regards,

    Edward Gil
    director, business development
    EXCLAIM (Rich Media)
    818-470-4300 egil@exclaim.com
    http://www.exclaim.com

    Posted by: Edward Gil, dir. Biz Dev, EXCLAIM on September 8th, 2006 at 6:59 am

  16. I’d like to contact the principals of mixi to consider our service:

    Our company, Exclaim, introduces new revenue channels as a central digital media management hub monetizing user-generated content (videos, photos, music, blogs) across your web and wireless properties. Exclaim hosts a private-label, fully-integrated digital media platform and we can brand it for your organization. We share revenue with you from monetizing user-generated content by means of photo printing/merchandising and premium web/wireless applications.
    Strategically, Exclaim delivers enterprise software, a fully integrated white-label media platform, and a fulfillment operation. Time-to-market and build vs. buy concerns are solved with our ability to quickly set up your branded solution to deepen your relationship with your users while also creating customers that generate revenue.

    Edward Gil
    director, business development
    EXCLAIM
    tel: 1-818-470-4300 direct
    egil@exclaim.com
    http://www.exclaim.com

    Posted by: Edward Gil, dir. Biz Dev, EXCLAIM on September 8th, 2006 at 7:01 am

  17. Buon luogo, congratulazioni, il mio amico!

    Posted by: Azzurra on November 5th, 2006 at 2:53 pm

  18. I think that a great example of the strength of mixi’s design is that I can’t read kanji yet i still manage to navigate & use the site to stay intouch with my Japanese friends.

    Posted by: Funky Love Bunny on December 16th, 2006 at 9:59 pm

  19. I do agree that the recent new Mixi widgets (news and stuff) feel a bit useless and in the way, though maybe it’s a good idea to give Mixi some more portal aspect, so that more users decide to set Mixi as their “home page” in their browser instead of Yahoo or MSN. Oh it’s Right

    Posted by: giełda on April 16th, 2007 at 8:14 pm

  20. Hi,

    Nice idea!

    I run the Mixi in English website at http://gaijinwomen.com and many users often email about what they like and don’t like about Mixi.

    If anyone would like to try out Mixi in English, drop by and see some of the Mixi screens in English.

    Cheers

    Posted by: Leon on July 29th, 2007 at 12:23 pm

  21. Mixi is great– I wish I could stop getting emails from them though.

    Posted by: xkaren on August 8th, 2007 at 4:31 am

  22. nice article!!! i agree that mixi is the best out there.

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