Usability Forum

Rabble.com is a tough nut to crack (for information)

By Eddie LopezEddie_Lopez. Friday, June 2, 2006 8:44:00 PM

If you’ve got a cell phone and something to say, you can RABBLE.

CREATE IT. SNAP IT. SHOUT IT. SHARE IT.

Get in on the hottest community around by downloading Rabble today. Be the channel.
Click on the icons below to meet the rabble...

It's blogging. Mo-blogging to be exact. That much I can gather, but what are these channels? What do I need to download? Where can I get an idea of how this will work with my cell phone? None of that information is available on the main page. What if I had no idea what "mo-blogging" is? This whole site makes me think rabble is another secret society that doesn't want me to know what they are up to.

The only thing I can do (as a non member/new user) is give it my phone number to get Rabble on my phone. I'm sure this would be a stopping point for most users. I was a little apprehensive about dropping my phone number to have something sent to it...when I had little idea of what was being sent. In the name of science, I proceeded... I WAP'd my phone to the URL they gave me and got something along the lines of:

Welcome Fanscape members! Rabble is the hottest, new community around and it's all on your cell phone. We've got the hookup for people, bands, blogs and places, with you 24/7 and in your back pocket!

...First off, what is Fanscape and how did I become a member? Then, I get the option to get Rabble free for half a year (with the fanscape promo code). What am I signing up for? What do you mean it's the hottest community? Incidently, I just realized that I think I typed "farscape" into the code box but didn't get an error message. I'm sure I can expect something on my cingular bill for this now.

I think rabble.com asks you to jump too far into the frey with little explanation of what your jumping into. I'm not saying you need to have sceenshots that show what it is (although that would be nice) but something that takes a step or two beyond the cliched social network buzzwords that are...well..."buzzing" around every site. Just tell me what services you offer and how it will be useful to me.

Without even looking any further than this blogging site (my.opera.com), I can't see an advantage to using rabble. Opera offers a mobile blogging capability (send an email to post), and with Mini or any capable browser, you can just blog like normal right? Why can't I log into blogger.com or my.opera.com using a browser on my phone? What is the value added? I can assume there is value somewhere, but it's just not answering the "why?" question for me at all.

I guess while I'm at it, I'd say the login could be improved as well- if you're going to have the number and password field present, it's probably best to not use the field identifier inside the text box (leaving the password one blank)... I would suggest labeling them seperately, say underneath the text fields... I'm willing to conceded my error here, but I think it still it could be clearer:

DNS for our postal mailMeet the new iron, same as the old iron

Comments

Anonymous # Friday, June 16, 2006 9:15:14 PM

Derrick Oien writes: Eddie, Thanks so much for taking the time to check out Rabble. I have to concede on a number of your points in your write up. I should give you some history to explain. Rabble is really focused on a primarily mobile experience. Almost all of our users have found Rabble from their carriers deck as opposed to finding something from our website. We also made a conscious decision to not allow web only users to use the Rabble.com website. The website realy is a support mechanism for those few customers of ours who want to use the web as well as to synchronize their various web experiences to their mobile. While you are correct that one can update Blogger and other services using SMS, Rabble allows one to synchronize across a variety of platforms and provide bi-directional publication between the web and mobile. The new version of the website that will be coming out later this summer will certainly embrace a number of the issues and concepts you outline as well as allow for much broader access than we currently provide to non-paying subscribers. I'd look forward to getting your feedback when we roll that out. -Derrick

Eddie LopezEddie_Lopez # Monday, June 19, 2006 5:51:02 PM

Thanks for checking Derrick.

I appreciate your response. "Viral" marketing, word of mouth, links, articles, etc. come across our collective bows at an alarming rate these days. I really feel it's a missed opportunity not to take advantage of that by providing a "Look, here's what we do and why you would want it..." page. Make it easy to get to.

I know most people have short attention spans... lord knows I do too. But I do actually like follow links I see to find out more about who you are and what you do...and most importantly, why you should get my money.

Again- thanks for checking in.

-Eddie