Black Web 2.0

Hopefully at the 2008 SXSW Interactive Festival. The 2008 SXSW Panel Picker allows users to vote on what THEY think should be included in the panel line up. Vote now (scratch that, get EVERYONE you know to vote) because the poll is only open until September 21st!

Here is a quick description of the “Where are all the Black Tech Bloggers?” idea submitted by Lynne d Johnson:

In August 2007, Podtech Vlogger Loren Feldman got dressed up in black face (a tech nigga nonetheless) and asked the question, “Where Are The Black Tech Bloggers?” While Feldman’s video drummed up controversy and was labeled as racist, it got the blogosphere thinking and talking. Especially the black tech bloggers. Here’s your chance to discover that they really exist, and to learn how they think about technology, and well, people like Feldman.

Vote so that there can be representation at SXSW and it can be proven that black tech bloggers do exist.

Take a look for yourself…

Radio One

TV One

I really don’t know what to say about this one. Don’t get me wrong, Radio One’s corporate site is much better then it was but honestly I was just expecting much more from this “Urban Media Specialist.”

TV One, on the other hand, is much better then its parent site. However, when I come across a website that targets African-Americans and the color scheme is one of the many typical “afro-centric” color schemes used for this demographic I become disappoint. My disappointment is only because I know that there is no specific color scheme that can limit the culture. We are all colors.

I will say there are many, many things that I loved about TV One’s website, one being the integration of community. While not as “robust” as MySpace it offers many of the same features such as member profiles, member blogs, member groups called “Clubs” and a “Friend List” which is displayed on your profile. While you can’t customize your profile with themes or embed video and music, users can share clips from TV One’s programming and link to WMV from their blog (some even link off of the site to YouTube). They also seem to have a fairly active message board.

Overall I think TV One’s online community is a step in the right direction but I think Radio One’s corporate web site needs work.

Essence Studios’ first project will be “30 Dates in 30 Days,” the industry’s first interactive, online reality dating show, set to debut in September on Essence.com.

The show will pair five single women with six eligible bachelors each for a week’s worth of dates. Documented on video, each webisode will feature one of the six consecutive dates with different bachelors, complete with post-date testimonials.

Viewers will be asked to vote each day on which bachelor she should go out with, what she should wear, where the couple should go on their date, and whether she should go out with her selected bachelor again.

“30 Dates in 30 Days” culminates with a group-date event featuring the viewer-matched couples. Read more on EURweb.com

Looks very interesting, particularly how web users will be able to interact online with the webisode’s singles.

I must say I love EbonyJet.com the design is so clean and the approach to publish the publications content in a blog format versus the typical online magazine format is refreshing, and lets not forget this site is not even officially launched yet! Ebony and Jet has definitely brought their ‘A’ game. This does lead me to wonder when other websites who cater to similar, older demographics will follow? Lynne d Johnson recently gave an overview on Old Black Media Getting a Whiff of Web 2.0 and makes some great observations on not only EbonyJet.com but the many other websites that have embraced Web 2.0 lately..

I recently came across BET’s new broadband video player called BET On Blast and was very impressed with the presentation of the video content. The UI as a whole is slick. Even the ads featured here flow seamlessly into the design and look as if they belong there, this can be hard for some designers to execute and some completely overlook it as part of the design. Paying attention to this sort of thing only strengthens a brand.

The navigation is smooth and usable with 2nd level links being presented as dropdowns in the nav and also the the right on the player. There is a clear but not overwhelming use of iconography for the “info” button. Clicking this button triggers a panel to flip and displays additional information as well as an option to email that particular video. The Playlist itself also has smooth transitions similar to the main nav, I like it but I don’t think it should slide to cove content and most importantly navigation. The only other improvement that I think could be made is to make the drag and drop functionality of each video more intuitive, the text that displays on rollover of a panel is to the point and straight forward, no doubt about that, but even so I naturally felt the need to want to drag and drop directly into the video player.

Overall I think the site is beautiful (not to mention we have a similar color pallet ) and is a great use of Flash especially when most would have opted to use AJAX.

This is kind of late but you will have to excuse me, I have a lot of catching up to do. By now many of you have already seen the new BlackEnterprise.com and formed your impressions of it. I decided to make this my first post because I keep getting emails for them about their redesign (probably apart of an ongoing campaign). My first impression…I like it. It is completely different from their previous site and there is less of a disconnect between their printed publication and their web publication. Although it is about 100% better then their previous site visually there is still so much clutter on the page. The use of 4 columns is…well…distracting, I am not sure where to look, the content that is there feels overwhelming and now I want to leave for fear I won’t be able to find what I need. Overall, I think the design is good, it could be cleaner but I think that it is a huge improvement. My only gripe is the layout and the presentation of content, presenting their internal promotions (right) embedded in the content to free up more space and decreasing the number of columns. What do you think is this Black Web 2.0?

So I know many of you are probably wondering exactly what this site is and why the word “black” is before “web 2.0.” After all, the web is not black or white and doesn’t care what race a user is. Whites visit sites that are targeted to Blacks and visa versa. As a Black web user I started to take note of the different user experiences I had come in contact with visiting sites that targeted African-Americans or African-American culture. I was disappointed at the vast differences between these websites and other sites that targeted the general public. Naturally I asked myself “Why?” Just when I began to think that maybe there weren’t as many African-Americans like me who sought out pleasant web user experiences I noticed changes in some of the most popular destinations on the web for blacks. Maybe there is hope.

You see, as a Web Designer it is natural for me to look at websites that I visit in my leisure in this manner which is one of the reasons why I decided to start this blog. However, the main reason why I started this blog was because although we are seeing so much progress in how black websites are presented to their users I still think there is progress that can be made so that these websites are comparable to others that target the general public. Yes perhaps some of these projects have smaller budgets or perhaps it is a lack of knowledge. Just in case it is the latter, I am hoping this blog can help someone who runs a web property or is thinking of starting one that targets African-Americans and maybe even help someone to look at black web properties as a whole in a new light.

With that said I hope to also offer other tools (see Tools section) and have guest bloggers from experts in the industry. I welcome feedback and contributions in the form of posts as well.

-angela