Bits Blog: Major Redesign of Google Maps Is Unveiled

Google is introducing more personalized maps that will recommend places to go based on their preferences and those of people with similar tastes.

Google is taking on a new challenge in mapping — creating real-time, personalized maps for everyone on the planet.

At its annual I/O developers conference on Wednesday, Google announced a new Google Maps, rebuilt from the ground up, by far the biggest redesign since it introduced Maps eight years ago.

When users who are logged in to Google visit Maps, they will see highlighted the places they frequently visit, like restaurants, museums and their home and office. Google learns the places they go by drawing information from all of Google’s services — including search and Maps history, Google Plus posts and information in their Gmail in-box. (A search on the new Maps revealed, for instance, that Larry Page, Google’s chief executive, likes State Bird Provisions, a restaurant in San Francisco.)

When users visit a new city, Google will recommend places to go based on their preferences and those of people with similar tastes.

The maps will change in real-time, so if you click on a museum, the other museums in the city will pop up. Choose a museum, and the map will shift so that the small roads and landmarks needed to navigate to that museum appear, and other street names fade away.

“Everybody gets their own map, every time,” said Jonah Jones, the lead designer for the new Google Maps, in an interview before the conference.

The new Google Maps looks different in other ways. The maps now fill more of the screen, including space on the top and sides. If you search for cafes nearby, for instance, results are labeled on the map (they are not in the old version) and cards with relevant information appear on the map. These can include ads, which are labeled in purple, and offers like a coupon for a local business.

Google Earth, which shows satellite 3-D imagery, was previously available only as an app to download. Now, it will be incorporated in the online version of Google Maps, so users can zoom in and explore a city’s landmarks in 3-D. They can zoom out and see the planet, with real-time weather, and the Milky Way.

While Google engineers were testing the maps in recent weeks, they noticed a black smudge on the Earth and the sun. At first, they thought it was a problem with the map, but then discovered that they were seeing an eclipse on the other side of the world, off Australia, in real time.

Google can do this because of a technology called WebGL that renders graphics inside a browser, as opposed to downloading images from a server, a process that takes longer and does not allow graphics to be as complex.

People can also view users’ photos from various places and see inside hundreds of thousands of local businesses. And the new Maps has improved public transit directions, including a schedule of departure times, a comparison with driving times and personalized directions from a user’s home.

Google plans to slowly introduce the new Maps to users, starting with conference attendees and then people who sign up online. It is only for desktop computers to start, but Google will also be updating its iPhone and Android Maps apps soon.

Facebook’s Redesign Hopes to Keep Users Engaged

Company executives have broadly said they want to make the News Feed, the first page every user sees upon logging in, more relevant.

In an earnings call with Wall Street analysts in January, the company’s founder and chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, offered some hints of what a reimagined News Feed might look like: bigger photos, more videos and “more engaging ads.”

“Advertisers want really rich things like big pictures or videos, and we haven’t provided those things historically,” Mr. Zuckerberg said at the time.

Facebook declined to comment on the redesign, which is scheduled to be announced at its headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. But the adjustments will reflect the tricky balance Facebook faces now that it is a public company: to keep drawing users to the site while not alienating them with more finely targeted advertisements, which is Facebook’s chief source of revenue.

The pressures are acute, given Facebook’s still anemic performance on Wall Street. It came out of the box last May with an extraordinarily high valuation of $38 a share, which slumped to half last fall, and has remained for the most part under $30.

“They have to walk a fine line between the user’s needs and advertiser’s needs,” said Karsten Weide, an analyst with IDC. The user, he went on, could use “better, more intelligent filtering,” while the advertiser needs “smarter, more flexible advertising formats.”

Facebook’s challenge is all the more important considering some warning signs of boredom.

Earlier this year came worrying news that 61 percent of users had taken a sabbatical from the social network, sometimes for months at a time; boredom was one of the reasons cited in the survey by the Pew Research Center. Even worse, 20 percent had deactivated their account entirely.

Advertisers have for years wanted to find new ways to show targeted ads to Facebook users, based on the vast data that the social network has about them. But Facebook has at times run into problems with new advertising products.

For example, last year, just before it filed for its public offering, it began to show advertisements in the News Feed, largely in the form of the controversial Sponsored Stories, where one user’s “like” for a brand was deployed to market that brand to a user’s Facebook “friends.”

Last fall, again in an effort to drum up new revenue, Facebook offered brands and individual users a way to pay Facebook to promote a particular post on the News Feed. Those who did not pay could expect an average post to reach about a third of their Facebook friends, according to the company’s own analysis. That immediately drew criticism, including from Mark Cuban, a technology investor and owner of the Mavericks basketball team, who wrote in an angry post on his blog (http://blogmaverick.com/) last fall that Facebook had made it too expensive for a brand like the Mavericks to reach its fans.

This week, responding to fresh criticism, Facebook said it did not “artificially suppress” content to feature paid posts.

The social networking giant has tweaked its News Feed over the years. Since 2009, Facebook has filtered what every user sees on the News Feed, based on the wisdom of its proprietary algorithm, called Edge Rank, which determines which posts a particular user is likely to find most interesting.

In 2010, it allowed users to chronologically filter the contents of the scrolling feed. The next year, it introduced a separate right-hand-side ticker — Twitter-esque, some said — of everything that every “friend” and brand page had posted.

At the heart of Facebook’s business is to hold the attention of its one billion users worldwide. That means keeping them entertained and on the site as frequently as possible.

It seems to be losing this battle somewhat with its youngest users. Teenagers are increasingly turning to other services, including Instagram, which Facebook now owns, so much so that David A. Ebersman, the company’s chief financial officer, said last week in a conference sponsored by Morgan Stanley that Facebook considered the photo-sharing site a competitor.

Instagram is not its only worry. Americans are increasingly turning to Pinterest to share shopping desires with their friends; Tumblr is a popular forum for self-expression, and Twitter continues to grow as a platform for news and entertainment.

Many people may no longer know all their “friends” on Facebook, which makes it difficult for the company to stuff the News Feed with posts that users will find relevant. Then there are ads.

“The bigger opportunity for Facebook is in cracking the relevance nut,” said Travis Katz, founder of an online travel service, Gogobot, that is integrated with Facebook.

“The noise-to-signal ratio in the feed has increased dramatically,” he added, “to the point where I often miss stories that were important to me.”

At the Morgan Stanley conference, Mr. Ebersman said the company’s filtering algorithms get “smarter” the more a Facebook user clicks on what is displayed on the News Feed.

“So of all the information we are able to show you on Facebook, we are trying algorithmically to pick out which pieces of content to put at the top of your News Feed because we think you will find them most engaging.”

Facebook Shows Off News Feed Redesign

The new design of the Facebook News Feed presents bigger photos and links, including for advertisements, and lets users see specialized streams focused on topics like music and posts by close friends.

The changes are designed to address the company’s two most vital challenges: how to hold on to users at a time of competing, specialized social networks and how to draw more advertising dollars to please Wall Street.

Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s co-founder and chief executive, said at a news conference that he wanted Facebook to be “the best personalized newspaper in the world.” And like a newspaper editor, he wants the “front page” of Facebook to be more engaging — in particular on the smaller screens of mobile devices.

The topic-specific News Feeds could well persuade users to spend more time scrolling through various streams of content. And the redesign will offer bigger real estate for advertisers, including more opportunities for brands to feature bigger pictures, which marketers say are more persuasive than words.

Facebook’s proprietary algorithms, which try to guess what every user will want to see, will continue to filter the items that show up on each person’s main News Feed. And users will be able to drill down into specific topics they are interested in, akin to the sections of a newspaper.

For instance, they can switch over to specialized feeds that are focused on just the music they are interested in, or they can scroll through a feed that consists of posts from the pages of products and people they follow — a bit like Twitter. If they want to see everything that their friends have posted, they can choose to do that, too; those posts will rush down in chronological order, without any filtering by Facebook’s robots.

Facebook introduced the new design to some users of the Web version of its service on Thursday, and will extend it to all Web users and to mobile apps in coming weeks.

It’s unclear how users will react to the changes; in the past, major design changes have often been greeted by complaints, at least initially.

Investors seemed to welcome the new look. Shares of Facebook rose 4.1 percent on Tuesday, to $28.58. But the company’s stock price remains substantially lower than its $38 initial public offering price last May.

Facebook is clearly hoping the new format will encourage users to stay longer on the site. At the news conference to announce the changes, officials offered examples of content they hoped would be compelling: photos of a cousin’s babies on one area of the page, Justin Timberlake concert news on another, a list of stories your friends liked on National Public Radio on still another.

“The best personalized newspaper should have a broad diversity of content,” Mr. Zuckerberg said. “The most important stuff is going to be on the front page,” he went on. “Then people have a chance to dig in.”

The announcement met with swift praise from the advertising industry. In addition to bigger ad formats, the redesign’s specialized content streams could keep users glued to the site longer, marketers said.

“This will result in more time spent over all on the Facebook News Feed — and of course, increase engagement with content and ads,” said Hussein Fazal, chief executive of AdParlor, which buys advertisements on Facebook on behalf of several brands.

Facebook executives suggested that there would be no immediate changes to the number of advertisements that appear on the News Feed.

Julie Zhou, the company’s design chief, said only that ads would be more visual. “Everything across the board is going to get this richer, more immersive design,” Ms. Zhou said.

What We Want in a PlayStation Store Redesign

It's been a whirlwind week of PlayStation news. As if a new model of the PS3 wasn't exciting enough, PlayStation Australia followed it up by teasing that a new look was coming to the PlayStation Store. Then, PlayStation promoted its new web portal and got everyone talking about what the humble store might become.

We don't have any definitive answers as to what's happening or when it's happening, but we do have lots of PlayStation Store ideas Sony should listen to. Below are five seemingly simple things the PlayStation Store should be doing.

PRELOAD THE DOWNLOADS

You know what the kids love? Steam, Valve's PC gaming platform. One of the coolest things about Steam? The ability to preorder a game, download it, and then have it unlock at 12:01 a.m. the day of release so you can get to playing.

PlayStation's getting better about this -- Borderlands 2 launched on the PlayStation Network Tuesday -- but it's still far from perfect. IGN reader Jaime Escalera wrote in to Podcast Beyond this week lamenting that his friends planned on downloading Borderlands 2 at midnight, but were "super disappointed" to see it not go up until the next day. Of course, even if the PlayStation Store had published the game at 12:01 a.m., Jaime's friends would've had to sit there while 5.8 GB downloaded.

Adopting the preorder/preload model solves this problem. Get Borderlands 2 on the PlayStation Store the week before launch, let me download it, and then unlock it the moment mobile people can pick it up at GameStop. The future is now. Interestingly, IGN fan Stephen Roche said that this PSN model exists in Australia, so let's get it together, Sony.

ONLINE PURCHASES

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The PlayStation Store's model is a dinosaur.

It sounds simple -- if you want to buy something on the PlayStation Store, use the PlayStation Store -- but it's so archaic. In a world where I can login to Xbox.com, buy a game and have it waiting in my download queue, the PlayStation Store's model is a dinosaur.

If the PlayStation Store is getting redesigned, it's time for PlayStation to embrace a ubiquitous experience -- a store that looks and feels the same on my PC or iPad as it does on my PS3 or Vita. Aside from the simplicity of use, you have to imagine it would increase PSN sales. How many PS3 and Vita games become impulse buys if you can read the review on IGN and then click over to the PlayStation Store to pick the title up in a few seconds? Right now, if a consumer hears about a cool PSN game, he or she has to keep that game at the forefront of his or her mind until they get home, turn on the PS3 and get to the Store.

PUSH DOWNLOADS

Now, Automatic Downloads are already a perk of PlayStation Plus, but if we're building a smarter PlayStation Store, let's give everyone the ability to have their PS3 wake up and start downloading. First and foremost, it works well with the idea of a web version of the PlayStation Store. If I download Lumines Supernova at work, I want my PS3 at home to turn on and download it so that I can play as soon as I walk through the front door. Secondly, getting this infrastructure in place would knockout the No. 1 thing people like to bitch about with the PlayStation Network: firmware.

If you're one of the people who uses the PS3 for the occasional exclusive, chances are you're forced to download a new update each time you turn on your PS3. With my revamped PlayStation Store, everyone would have the option for automatic downloads and push downloads -- and I'd make firmware default to this option. Any time PlayStation released an update, your system would boot up and get to installing.

MAKE AN EVENT OUT OF PUBLISHING

Busses get misses, kids get sick and cars breakdown -- I understand that not everything will be on time all the time. However, there's really no rhyme or reason to when the PlayStation Store updates on Tuesdays. Sometimes it's early in the San Francisco afternoon, other times it's just before Tuesday becomes Wednesday. Each week, it's a game of Russian roulette as to when you can get games.

This has to stop. YouTube has this thing called the Creator's Playbook. Basically, it's this huge document about how to be successful on the platform, and it stresses regularity and timing. "Frequency of uploads and other platform engagement keeps your channel feed active and retains audience interest," the playbook reads. "To build an audience, 'A consistent audience requires consistent content.' "

Let's be frank here -- the PlayStation Network audience isn't that "active." Yes, plenty of people downloaded Journey and have used the PlayStation Store, but the number of people saying "Oh, it's Tuesday! I have to see what's new on the PlayStation Store!" is a tiny one.

If Sony can get it together and say "Every Tuesday, we're publishing the store at 3 p.m. Pacific," it can become an event. It'll have people refreshing the store to the get new COD DLC and talking about what's to come. Tuesdays will become synonymous with the PlayStation Store to the masses. Add first day discounts, exclusives and surprises, and you'll build an audience that wants to be there as the Store update happens. All eyes would be on PlayStation.

FIX THE DOWNLOAD LIST

This is probably the nerdiest suggestion on the list, but if you've ever tried to use the PSN's Download List, you understand. Basically, the PlayStation Network rocks because it lets you download your content multiple times (there are system activations to worry about) in case you got a new console or whatever. Everything you've ever downloaded is added to the Download List, which is available in the PlayStation Store and Account Management.

The trouble is that there's no way to sort the Download List other than what it defaults to (date downloaded, and sometimes even that gets goofy). When you have DLC and games and more fighting it out on the list, this gets to be a big mess. If we're rebooting the store, let's toss a few options at the Download List. Stuff like sorting alphabetically and grouping content by type.

What do you think? If the PlayStation Store's getting revamped in October, what do you hope it means for the platform? Let us know in the comments below.