In Two posts last week,  I submit a rant about how bad some sites (that are themselves websites for top-notch SocialMedia-centered  gatherings) are in actually making their site usability “social” in a very intuitive way.   Here are the posts: http://wp.theoblogical.org/?p=6095
http://wp.theoblogical.org/?p=6100,  and this morning I saw a link on Twitter to a page apparently set up later (yes,  this week, actually,  on the 11th) under “Conversation”.   I went back to the Home page for SuperNova hub and began looking for how I might find the video if I went to the site in search of the widely acclaimed Dialogue between Danah Boyd and Jeff Jarvis.  

I saw Jeff Jarvis’ picture at the top of the Speakers list,  and thinking that link might get me to a list of links to items involving him,  I found nothing except a Speakers page on  which I had to once again scroll down to Jeff Jarvis,  and clicking that link,  I get to an individual speaker page on Jeff Jarvis.  But still no links to the places  in the proceedings where Jarvis was part of or all of the content.  This would have been a good place (the individual Speaker page)  to link  to content like the dialogue with Jeff and Danah.  Simple database maneuver,  at least it is in WordPress (upon which Supernova Hub seems to be built). 

WordPress also provides “Custom Page Types” that enable one to do a “Video Page Type”  so that posts that use this type can use their own specialized templates with certain types of links and resources,  and in this way,  links from speakers’ profiles can be produced to any resources on the site that include that speaker. 

I am a bit frustrated that someone like me finds himself without enough employment to pay bills,  but that organizations “doing Social Media” seem to be leaving their “social” sites full of UI holes.  There needs to be a meshing of skills for effective “Social Media” that utilize database information (and ,  prior to that,  capturing the data in the right way so that relational links are established and ready to call upon).

Jeff and Danah are the content in this case.  Their dialogue was widely acclaimed and tweeted as such.   My own experience in getting to the site and looking for that dialogue was what got me on a rant asking “WHY? “.  Why would such a highlight of the conference be so difficult to find.  It just earlier this  week became A LITTLE easier since a blog post was put up about it,  and that blog post appeared down the page to the left under Latest Updates.   But it’s been over 2 weeks.  Someone was not paying attention to what people are talking about on the Social Streams about what they saw and/or heard at Supernova 2010.  You don’t put such things ",  to use newspaper parlance,  “below the fold”. 

Videos should also be a main navigation item (or at least “Multimedia” which links to all the  various types of media),  so that I could quickly navigate to media which are often the reason why a person was sent to the site inthefirst place.

The video that was on this recently posted Supernova Hub blog page was a different one than that of the uStream video which I found back on August 1.  When I first saw it,  I was enthused because the uStream video had been so dark,  and  this one looked much better lighted.  But the camera never zoomed from its original wide angle, so I STILL could not see Jeff’s and Danah’s faces,  and so I was rolling my eyes for yet another instance of production neglect. For Supernova Hub,  which is presumably interested in providing some quality recordings (they did the audio so well….why was the video so amateurish?  2 different videos!  Good light,  wrong framing.  Bad light on the  better framing. Ahhhhhhhhhhh! 

However, let me say this, though.  At least they had cameras there and mics and captured SOMETHING,  which is more than I can say for other orgs I have observed over the past several months.